African Americans and Community Engagement in Higher Education

This book discusses race and its roles in university-community partnerships. The contributors take a collaborative, interdisciplinary, and multiregional approach that allows students, agency staff, community constituents, faculty, and campus administrators an opportunity to reflect on and redefine what impact African American identity—in the academy and in the community—has on various forms of community engagement. From historic concepts of "race uplift" to contemporary debates about racialized perceptions of need, they argue that African American identity plays a significant role. In representing best practices, recommendations, personal insight, and informed warnings about building sustainable and mutually beneficial relationships, the contributors provide a cogent platform from which to encourage the difficult and much-needed inclusion of race in dialogues of national service and community engagement.

List of Tables

Preface: Using History, Experience, and Theory to Balance

Relationships in Community Engagement
Stephanie Y. Evans

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Characteristics of Engagement: Communicated

Experiences of Race, Universities, and Communities
Colette M. Taylor

Part 1. Community Service, Volunteerism, and Engagement
Stephanie Y. Evans, Colette M. Taylor, Michelle R. Dunlap, and DeMond S. Miller

1. The Community Folk Art Center: A University and Community Creative Collaboration
Kheli R. Willetts

2. An African American Health Care Experience: An Academic Medical Center and Its Interdisciplinary Practice
Kendall M. Campbell

3. African American College Students and Volunteerism: Attitudes toward Mentoring at a Title I School
Joi Nathan

4. Prejudice, Pitfalls, and Promise: Experiences in Community Service in a Historically Black University
Jeff Brooks

Part 2. Community Service-Learning
Michelle R. Dunlap

5. Can the Village Educate the Prospective Teacher?: Reflections on Multicultural Service-Learning in African American Communities
Lucy Mule

6. Sowing Seeds of Success: Gardening as a Method of Increasing Academic Self-Efficacy and Retention among African American Students
August Hoffman, Julie Wallach, Eduardo Sanchez, and Richard Carifo

7. A Service or a Commitment?: A Black Man Teaching Service-Learning at a Predominantly White Institution
Troy Harden

8. Racial Identity and the Ethics of Service-Learning as Pedagogy
Annemarie Vaccaro

9. "We'll Understand It Better By and By": A Three-Dimensional Approach to Teaching Race through Community Engagement
Meta Mendel-Reyes and Dwayne A. Mack

Part 3. Community-Based Research
DeMond S. Miller

10. Black Like Me: Navigating Race, Gender, Research, and Community
Fleda Mask Jackson

11. A Partnership with the African American Church: IMPPACT and S.P.I.C.E.S. For Life
Micah McCreary, Monica Jones, Raymond Tademy, and John Fife

12. "I Have Three Strikes Against Me": Narratives of Plight and Efficacy among Older African American Homeless Women and Their Implications for Engaged Inquiry
Olivia G. M. Washington and David P. Moxley

13. A Culturally Competent Community-Based Research Approach with African American Neighborhoods: Critical Components and Examples
Richard Briscoe, Harold R. Keller, Gwen McClain, Evangeline R. Best, and Jessica Mazza

14. Community Engagement and Collaborations in Community-Based Research: The Road to Project Butterfly
GiShawn Mance, Bernadette Sánchez, and Niambi Jaha-Echols

Final Word: African Americans and Community Engagement: A Challenge and Opportunity for Higher Education
Donald F. Blake

List of Contributors
Index