A Multidisciplinary Collaborative Approach to a University-Community Partnership: Lessons Learned

Universities often respond to community needs through a traditional, single disciplinary expert outreach model. However, multiple perspectives are required to solve complex community problems. In this case example, a multidisciplinary university team was selected to work on a contracted university-college partnership project over an eighteen-month period. Lessons learned from using this problem-focused multidisciplinary approach to outreach intervention are presented. Topics discussed include the time needed and issues associated with multidisciplinary team development; leadership changes during the project; the need to bridge organizational structures across partners; the ways in which faculty cultures may inhibit outreach activity; and the importance of intellectual and organizational neutral space to multidisciplinary team success. T tradition of the land-grant university is rooted in the mission of community service. However, many urban communities that are engaged in redeveloping and redefining their communities have not experienced particularly successful partnerships with many universities. Traditionally, universities approached such relationships using an intervention model rooted in a single discipline with mixed results. If we assume, instead, that multiple perspectives are required to solve complex problems (Sandmann and Flynn 1997), then a case can be made for a different university intervention model when working with the challenging issues facing urban communities and society in general. One such strategy for improving outreach is to strengthen the university’s capacity to organize knowledge around problems as well as around disciplines (Votruba 1996). The experience of university faculty and administrators in one university-community-state agency partnership provides examples of the challenges of using a problem-focused, multidisciplinary approach to outreach intervention. The partnership on which this article is based was funded by a contract with a state social service agency. It provided for the creation 20 Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement “[T]he administrator [leading the project] believed there was a need to organize different knowledge bases around