Sustaining University-Community Partnerships in Times of Change: Community-driven Goals Supporting Empowerment, Wellbeing, and Advocacy

• In Event: Historicizing University-Community Links at 30: Proleptic Learnings in Resistance, Responsiveness, and Reimagining Education

Abstract

La Clase Mágica (LCM), an after-school program serving primarily Hispanic youth with a thirty-year history of university-community partnership in Southern California, has continually transformed in response to local community and institutional needs and pressures. LCM partners reflect back over its long history to understand the processes that sustained this partnership. Modeled after The Fifth Dimension (Cole & Distributed Literacy Consortium, 2006), LCM was a founding program in the UC Links network (Vásquez, 2003) and involved a partnership between a local community and university to provide out-of-school bilingual informal learning activities for children, youth, and families in partnership with university students and faculty. In 2019, LCM transformed due to Vásquez’s retirement, transitioning to a new UC San Diego faculty member and community partner to sustain the legacy of community-driven programming and scholarship. LCM partners identified new community priorities, such as improved family engagement and wellbeing initiatives to support during and after COVID-19 (Author, 2021).

Methodologically, we used the sociotechnical activity system as a lens to examine the partnership as the primary work system and the influence of forces in the macrosocial system (Author, 2021). We also used community-based participatory research (CBPR) (Israel et al., 2005) as the community raised research questions centering on the intersection of health, culture, and education. Principles of CBPR recognize community as a unit of identity, builds on strengths within the community, prioritizes equitable collaboration and co-learning, and integrates a balance of research and practice over a long term relationship (Israel et al., 2019, p. 274).. Community-driven research questions included, “What processes sustain our partnerships longitudinally?”

Over four-years, we conducted over thirty interviews with LCM staff, university student mentors, youth, and their families, and took over 100 hours of field notes, as well as analyzed monthly meeting notes between LCM and the university team to document responses to changes including the COVID-19 pandemic and to current anti-immigrant sentiments (Author4, under review). Interviews and meeting minutes were coded inductively by the PI, undergraduate and doctoral researchers, and a member of the LCM community (Saldaña, 2021). Results indicate that the following sustained the partnership in times of change: 1) a commitment to create a community of care; 2) consistent critical meetings to address issues within our community (i.e. critical dialogue); 3) research goal alignment; 4) trusting relationships; 5) flexibility/adaptability; 6) culturally sustaining practices and funds of knowledge (Moll et al., 1992); and 7) authentic family engagement.

Results recognize the importance of critical dialoguing (Matusov & Pease-Alvarez, 2020; Author, 2016, 2021) and constructive follow-up (Casstevens & Stansbury, 2023) in which honest feedback even amidst conflict, anchored the partnership. It was necessary to consider and resolve dominant ideologies within the university, so that the voices of immigrant families led to goal development and prioritization within the partnership for program related research and activities (Wades-Jaimes et al., 2019). These results offer important insights into the role of university-community partnership in supporting small, culturally-sustaining after-school programs, especially in light of recent anti-immigrant sentiment and decreases in federal support.

Authors

• Sayra Martinez, La Colonia De Eden Garden Inc

• Itzel Gonzalez Velazquez, University of California - San Diego

• Amy Vatne Bintliff, University of California - San Diego