Based on the community partner’s responses, the study suggests that partners (faculty members, students, community partners) in the service-learning programs are entering the experience with a strong intention to build a collaborative relationship during the period of a semester and beyond it. Their partnership is actually formed by their real actions or practices that could support building trust and respect during the service-learning program from the beginning of the collaboration with community organizations till the end of the experience and the commencement of another one. However, the success of the collaboration is determined by how the partnership is initially formed between community partners and campus. Their partnership experience should reflect trust, mutual respect, and efforts from all parties (Holland, 2005;Leiderman et al., 2002;Torres &Schaffer, 2000;Strier, 2011).
Both community partners in this study and previous studies considered “active engagement” as an essential aspect for the partnership effectiveness. Community organizations should engage from the beginning to ensure mutual benefit and commitment for both (Bernal et al., 2004; Strier, 2011).
In the case of the AUC, the personal connection (network of individual relationships) with faculty members (professors) was the main method to initiate and sustain the partnership with community organizations. This seems to be found in other literature that considered network of individual relationships as the main method of partnership initiation that can be strengthen with time and shared experiences (Torres &Schaffer, 2000). Those who had multiple and ongoing collaborations with service-learning courses were large and very reputable community organizations. Many of them worked with AUC since the beginning of the CBL program which allowed the growth of a more mature experience. Although the community partners’ responses were mainly influenced by their current or the most previous
collaboration with the university, they ensured that their partnership took time and efforts from both sides.
In the case of sustaining the partnership, the community partners suggested the creation of memorandum of understanding between the community partners and the campus to include definite principles and process with clear expectations towards agreed objectives and outcomes. It is not the first time that community partners who worked with service- learning programs proposed a written partnership agreement; this was mentioned in previous literature. A written agreement is considered as an important mean for creating sustainable campus-community partnerships and a certain level of accountability among partners (Connors & Seifer, 1998).
Recommendations to enhance effective creation of partnerships were:
• Evaluating the effectiveness of the current university procedures to support the service-learning program and evaluating the perceived impact of service-learning programs on community partners.
• The CBL office should develop a template of a written partnership (MOU) to clarify objectives and outcomes and identity expectations from partners, clear level of responsibility and accountability. The MOU should be shared with professors for future collaboration with community organizations.
• Giving more opportunity to students to work with different community organizations and not only the one with previous experience with the university to expand the partnerships with community organizations.
• Listening to the community partners’ feedback after the end of the experience and sharing with them students’ feedback to improve both side experience. It will help to sustain the relationship with community partners by building a sense of respect and trust.
4.3.2 Supporting “mutual benefits” between campus and community partners
Community partners surveyed in this research mentioned mutual benefits as one of the most important characteristic of an effective partnership. They ranked “mutual benefits” as the fourth- most important characteristics of an effective campus-community partnerships. They believe that mutual benefits should include gains for both sides which can be achieved within an agreement that will grantee a collaboration from the beginning with clear goals, objectives and expectations, such as an MOU. This could lead to an effective partnership.
In fact, knowledge and skills exchanged and gained, which were mentioned by participants in both the interviews and surveys, were listed as a form of mutual benefits that represent the reciprocity principle among nine main characteristics of effective partnerships (Holland 2005). However, the community partners shared their concerns that the short-term experience provided by the semester-course is not enough to achieve an effective exchange of benefits which usually needs a longer interaction between students and community organization staff.
The request of community partners for mutual benefits is not surprising as the mutual benefits are the incentives that can satisfy partners in the equation of service-learning programs (Florence, Goodrow, Wachs, Grover, & Olive, 2007). The “sufficient benefits” have been mentioned as one of the core elements of effective partnerships (Leiderman et al., 2002). The word sufficient makes it subject to the satisfaction of partners or their agreement of what should be considered as “sufficient,” The majority of community participants in this study stated their satisfaction with the students’ contributions during the experience. The community partners have succeeded to list the most important contributions both the students made and the community partners did to support the service-learning experience. The mentioned contributions have diverse types of skills and shared knowledge that could be
considered both “tacit-know what” and “explicit-know that” (Farrington et al., 2015; Polanyi, 1969).
The participating community partners, in their recommendations and suggestions, emphasized their requests to support the capacity building of their organization through recognition of their needs for certain skills and qualifications, and through professional consultation. Recommendations to support mutual benefits were:
• The University office (the Center for Learning and Teaching) should publish newsletters to highlight the benefits gained by community partners during their experience.
• The CBL program (currently under the ACE office) could support the capacity building of the community organizations by respecting their needs of certain skills and qualifications.
• The service-learning courses should be paired with partners based on the students’ skills. Also, within one course different students should be distributed to projects based on their skills.
• Easing the access of community partners to the different services of the university service-learning programs.
• The university should support community partners’ development by providing their staff members with the opportunity to attend professional training and workshops that could enhance their organization capacity.