1.5 Key Terms

Before you read any further, there are some key terms we need to define. We use these terms often throughout this text. While these definitions are not comprehensive,  they do provide important context and information.

Asset (v. Deficit) Based When we refer to an asset-based approach, we intend for you to harness and articulate the positives of a situation as strategies for building and next steps. This is in contrast to deficit-based framing, which articulates lack or need. Our partners have noted in the past that students whose projects are most successful approach the organization with both humility (recognizing they don’t know all that’s possible to know about the organization) as well as an asset-based mindset. Amplifying successful practices and augmenting them with your work is important, given you are a learner who will only temporarily be engaged with the organization. While our partners are always excited to work with learners of all types (otherwise, they wouldn’t likely have agreed to support this experience!), they also take great pride in their work and how they serve their communities. Ensuring you honor the environment you are supporting in this short time in class is often best achieved with an asset-based approach to your project.

Capacity Building These projects, unlike direct-service projects (discussed below), help organizations build capacity. For instance, some organizations are looking for insight and/or support in writing content so they can apply for grants, or they are interested in revising their personnel management files or developing background check processes for volunteers. Some organizations are looking for website overhauls or revisions to mission statements and/or strategic plans. When students participate in capacity building activities, they are often not engaged directly with clients or community members served by the community partner (an exception to this could be something like program evaluation efforts). Capacity building helps organizations develop infrastructure so that they can better fulfill their missions.

Community Engagement We use the terms community engagement or community engaged learning/pedagogy/research. The term community is broad and allows for many different types of learning environments (for instance, a nonprofit environment, an on-campus partner, an organization applying for 501c3 status). And engagement is mutual participation. Therefore, we prefer to use the term community engagement when referring to our work. (We do not use the term service-learning. This is because, functionally, students do not provide a service to community partners. Rather, community partners provide an environment for students to practice—and occasionally fail!—in consequential contexts while working towards mastery of course objectives. Therefore, the term service is not applicable.)

Direct Service Direct-service activities, in the contexts of your course, are activities like tutoring for an after-school program, triaging calls, doing advocacy work, or providing direct service to clients of the community organization. Depending on your course, you may only participate in direct service once, or you may only do capacity building work, or you may provide direct services throughout the semester. Often, direct service is a logical step for students interested in continued work with their nonprofit partner once the semester ends.

Infrastructure Your instructor may use this as a catchall term to point out how the constructs wherein you are working with partners is confined by any number of criteria. For instance, infrastructure at a nonprofit includes all their internal and external communication policies, the documents they file annually with the IRS to maintain nonprofit status, the methods they use to track donations and support, as well as programming. But beyond this immediate infrastructure, the larger societal reasons why the nonprofit exists in the first place (federal policy, lack of funding, burgeoning need, etc) are all part of the global infrastructure that impacts the partner you are working with.

Learners In community engaged pedagogy (CEP), we are all learners. Whether your professor has taught this course 1 time or 100, each time they work with partners, the course looks different. That’s one of the things that’s so engaging about community engagement! In this text, we typically refer to “students” as learners, because when you engage in CEPs, you are wearing many hats, perhaps including: community member (e.g. project is in support of the local school district your kids attend), professional (you may work for a company that could partner with a nonprofit in the future), and, of course, you’re a student, too. Your professor may also wear many hats—they might be on the board of the nonprofit with which your class is partnering, or they may be connected with the organization for other reasons. And community partners may have worked with students in this course before, or maybe they’ve worked with students from a different college or university—or maybe this is the first time they’ve done community engagement work with a university course. Regardless, recognizing the many ways learners experience community engagement is important to help us all adapt to the assets we bring to the table.

Partners Throughout this book, we use the term partners to refer to the organizations and/or individuals with whom you will work. These are people that are not your instructor or your peers. Partners are the core of our learning teams.

Reciprocity Work with community partners must be reciprocal. Reciprocity begins before you even jump into the work or tasks at hand. It requires you recognize that the learning structure and opportunities the partner is providing demands both time and labor on their part. It requires you recognize that the end result of your work may not be useful to them, but that they are working with you for reasons beyond what you produce: they are interested in helping you learn more about their mission, the need they meet in the community, and provide you space to practice the skills from your course. This mindset is crucial as you begin your project.