Collaboration | Co-Creation | Capacity Building | Communication
The Community-Engaged Research, Action, and Partnerships (CERAP) unit is led by an interdisciplinary team of community engaged faculty and researchers who are committed to advancing community-driven research that improves lives, strengthens communities, and benefits society. Community-university partnerships—also referred to as engaged or public scholarship—are collaborations between community-based groups and higher education institutions working together to co-create new knowledge, policies, and/or practices that promote individual and social transformation. Our approach involves community members and university researchers as partners, and it is grounded in our commitment to co-investigation, co-creation, and co-learning.
The "Community Engaged Research Map" outlines a model for collaboration between university researchers and community members to co-investigate pressing social issues. It is represented as a sequence of five colored arrows, each symbolizing a phase in the research partnership process. Below these arrows, a horizontal orange arrow labeled “Ongoing negotiation of power with attention to justice & equity” spans the entire process.
Phases and Content:
- Personal & Professional Development: Ongoing commitment to learning and self-development.
- Cultural humility
- Asset perspective
- Positionality and reflexivity
- Communication
- Readiness assessments
- Historical and contextual background
- Community-based research theory & practice
- Establishing Partnerships: Background learning and relationship building.
- Community entry
- Trust building
- Values alignment
- Build shared culture
- Bidirectional communication
- Collaboratively identify priorities and goals
- Identify roles and expectations
- MOUS/agreements
- Establish foundation of justice and equity
- Study Design: Research planning and co-design for democratic participation.
- Ethics training and certification
- Sharing expertise
- Community advisory boards
- Determine RQs, methods, and analysis plans
- Include relevant stakeholders
- Identify capacity and TA needs
- Transparent processes and practices
- Conduct Cycles of Collaborative Inquiry: Select effective channels to engage target audience and participatory methods for co-learning.
- Reinforce collaborative team-based practices for all project phases
- Gather information
- Collect data
- Analyze data
- Interpret data
- Assess and engage additional stakeholders
- Generate key findings
- Identify desired actions and change targets
- Outcomes & Sustainability: Sharing findings and taking action.
- Identify target groups and stakeholders for dissemination
- Co-create strategies for sharing research findings
- Amplify community collaborators' expertise in dissemination process
- Mobilize communities for action
- Emphasize reciprocity and sustainability
Aims
The Community-Engaged Research, Action, and Partnerships (CERAP) is focused on increasing the Social Science Research Institute’s capacity to:
- advance community engaged research,
- promote ethical, healthy, and sustainable community-university partnerships,
- build community engaged research capacity, and
- disseminate research findings and take action to address community-identified priorities and pressing social issues
What We Do
- Consultations and collaborations
- Trainings
- Resource hub for community and university researchers
- Tool and method development
- Events and speaker series
- Community and university capacity building
- Institutional change work
Monthly Huddles
What is the Huddle?
The Huddle is a community of practice for Penn State faculty who share a commitment to equitable, sustainable, reciprocal, transformative community-engaged research. The goal of this community of practice is to build relationships with others who are passionate about co-creating research with community members and want to learn how to do it better. Through regular gatherings, we will share ideas, resources, tools, and build a culture of support. Building on our collective knowledge and expertise, the topics and themes for each session will come from faculty who are invited to present ongoing work, workshop a dilemma or challenge, pilot measures, share resources, lead topical discussions, practice activities, and more! We invite our Penn State colleagues to join us to build the Huddle as a space for supportive relationships and capacity building.
Upcoming Huddle Dates:
- March 20, 2026
- April 10, 2026
- May 15, 2026
The monthly Huddles are hybrid events. In-person room details (at University Park) and Zoom link will be provided upon RSVP each month.
Please note that providing a hybrid virtual/in-person format reflects our commitment to ensuring equitable access to opportunities for capacity building to the university-wide community across the Commonwealth
Steering Committee Members
- Mallika Bose, Landscape Architecture
- Kristina Brant, Rural Sociology
- Sarah Brothers, Sociology and Public Policy
- Jochebed Gayles, Health and Human Development
- Justine Lindemann, Community Development and Resilience
- Raffy Luquis, School of Behavioral Sciences and Education, Penn State Harrisburg
- Mark Ortiz, Geography
- Harrison Pinckney, Recreation, Park and Tourism Management
- Jessica Thompson, Health Policy and Administration
