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
Objectives
The Community-Engaged Research, Action, and Partnerships (CERAP) Unit is focused on increasing the Social Science Research Institute’s capacity to:
- Build community-engaged research capacity through trainings, symposia, and intensive, interactive workshops.
- Promote transformative, ethical, reciprocal, and sustainable community-university partnerships.
- Increase accessibility of research and information to community and university audiences through innovative dissemination methods.
- Act to address community-driven 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
Summer Institute
The CERAP Unit hosted its first Summer Institute on Community-Engaged Research from Tuesday, June 2nd - Wednesday, June 3rd. The Institute brought together community partners and Penn State faculty and staff for two days worth of workshops, symposia, and training. Day 1 focused on Research Practice Partnerships, Policy, and Public Impact, while Day 2 was an intensive Methodology Boot Camp focused on Youth Participatory Action Research. More information about our 2026 Summer Institute can be found in the attached report. CERAP would like to thank all of our speakers, attendees, staff and students for helping us to make this a successful event, and we look forward to hosting more annual Summer Institutes in the coming years!
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:
- September 4, 2026
- October 2, 2026
- November 6, 2026
- December 4, 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
