Community-Engaged Research: Opportunities, Challenges, and the Necessity of Institutional Support

Introduction

Community-engaged research describes an approach towards research that arose in response to the criticism that institutions of higher education functioned only as ivory towers, disconnected from real-world problems. This chapter will introduce the reader to the concept and mission of community-engaged research, and will focus, in particular, on the unique opportunities and challenges that this approach to scholarship presents. Scholarship that investigates this brand of research has shown that community-engaged researchers are unlikely to be successful unless they receive substantial support from their academic department and university. For this reason, this chapter will focus in depth on a variety of strategies that institutions of higher education can use to cultivate and sustain community-engaged scholarship among their faculty.