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Lessons Learned From the Community Outreach Partnership Centers Program

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In 1994, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
launched the Community Outreach Partnership Center (COPC) program
to foster and support collaborations between institutions of
higher education and their communities. HUD commissioned Lessons
Learned From the Community Outreach Partnership Centers Program
to review the experience of a sample of early COPC grantees. The
report discusses the challenges faced by many of these
partnerships and highlights the contributions that university-
community partnerships are making to community development
efforts across the country. Lessons Learned also reviews ways in
which university-community partnership efforts -- like those
supported by COPC -- are being institutionalized within colleges
and universities.

Through a review of application materials, site visits, and
follow-up interviews, qualitative data was collected from 25 COPC
grantees and their community partners. This report presents a
review and analysis of that data and attempts to address three
questions:

o Has the COPC program helped colleges and universities
broaden their community outreach activities?

o What kinds of partnerships have academic institutions
forged with their communities, and to what end?

o How, and to what extent, have colleges and universities
institutionalized their community outreach and partnership
activities?

The sample of grantees included in this study was selected
purposefully to yield lessons about both the challenges and the
accomplishments of the COPC program. The resulting sample matched
reasonably well with the profile of all 1994-1997 grantees on a
range of readily observable characteristics regarded as
influencing COPC performance and sustainability.

Data collected for this report from the 25 COPC sites show that
faculties and administrators at these institutions are
increasingly examining guidelines for promotion and tenure,
integrating service learning and other changes in pedagogy,
engaging in more collaborations with community partners,
conducting more applied research in local neighborhoods, and
directly serving their communities. University-community
partnerships are growing in number and are maturing in terms of
the body of knowledge and experience that is being shared among
their many adherents.

A complete copy of Lessons Learned From the Community Outreach
Partnership Centers Program is available at
https://www.huduser.gov/portal/publications/pdf/lessons_complete.pdf or
through HUD USER.

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