Introduction
Community-university partnerships play a significant role in the mission of universities and colleges. Saltmarsh and colleagues (2009) highlight the overlap between higher education and public interest, as well as the development of socially responsible graduates. With this in mind, community-engaged partnerships should be valued and mutually beneficial to everyone involved, where all individuals contribute to solving problems (Bringle et al., 2012). According to the Community-Campus Partnerships for Health (CCPH; 2013), partnerships are built on identified strengths and assets, and community partnerships are required to help achieve higher education’s public purpose (Trebil-Smith, 2019).
One area of impact that has recently attracted substantial attention from community outreach and educational researchers alike is the importance of integrated science, technology, arts, engineering, and mathematics (STEAM) lessons in K-12 education settings (Connor et al., 2015).The impetus of this work aimed to expose students to early experiences with often complex disciplines that can be engaging and possibly create meaningful interest in STEAM careers later in life (DeJarnette, 2018). Traditionally, STEAM content has been kept in more conventional science classroom settings (e.g., earth science, mathematics). Policymakers recognized the lack of systemic exposure and have called for collaborative efforts to further enhance student experiences in STEAM content areas while adhering to state education standards (Reeve, 2015).
Recognizing this need, researchers sought a potential partnership with local schools that could use different kinesiology (the study of human movement) modalities as the instrument to teach STEAM content. Project KINEs (short for kinesiology) was developed as a novel pathway to facilitate local teachers’ efforts to create STEAM lessons in a variety of different settings. Specifically, Project KINEs was developed as a collaborative initiative to assist local educators in northern Louisiana by providing professional development opportunities, as well as developing lesson plans and activities that integrate kinesiology principles with STEAM content. Specifically, these lessons and activities were purposefully created to emphasize the study of human movement in STEAM contexts. The initial belief was that the intersection of these topics would provide teachers a novel and engaging way to communicate their lessons.
Partnership Development
Initial conversations with local teachers centered on identifying potential content areas that could connect human movement, sport sciences, and health content to STEAM areas. Identifying these pathways for connection between kinesiology and STEAM with the teachers highlighted the need for consistent and authentic communication. This early step laid the foundation for the classroom curricula that would be developed over the course of Project KINEs. The teachers had tacit knowledge of upcoming changes to state standards, what would work in the classroom, equipment/material needs, and attention and time constraints of their students. These aspects were relatively overlooked by our research team. The importance of the initial meetings provided the scope where the Project KINEs research team could develop innovative ways to increase students’ exposure to STEAM content while also enhancing physical activity rates in an education setting, an area that has been limited in recent years (e.g., Committee on Physical Activity and Physical Education in the School Environment, Food and Nutrition Board, & Institute of Medicine, 2013).
While the initial motivation to carry out Project KINEs was established, identifying a funding source and partners to support the project became an inherent necessity. Fortunately, our local community has several opportunities that support endeavors to facilitate health-related initiatives, programs, and services that improve the quality of life and the wellbeing of youth in the surrounding area. Of note, in Louisiana approximately 67% of all k-12 students live in poverty and qualify for free or reduced lunch (Louisiana Department of Education, 2016). North Louisiana is a particularly appropriate setting for community-facing projects, as the region is racially and socioeconomically diverse. The school partners recruited for Project KINEs were located in Lincoln Parish (52% minority, 61% economically disadvantaged). Being able to identify and utilize a local grant-awarding foundation with similar aims to Project KINEs allowed our program team to meet with funding stakeholders, schoolteachers, and students to ensure the needs of all parties were met.
Similar to many community-oriented grants, Project KINEs was forced to evolve and adapt over the course of the grant cycle. At the outset of the program, the goals were lofty and poised to make meaningful contributions to community members. Yet, the strategy for implementation was limited. The original structure of the program was seemingly streamlined, but numerous events fundamentally changed the course of the program. For instance, the faculty and teacher stakeholders of Project KINEs changed due to turnover.
To ensure the efficacy and delivery of the program, new faculty leadership was identified and put in place. This included experts and stakeholders at various schools locally as well as different universities regionally. The ability to be nimble and embrace a multi-stakeholder collaborative team throughout the program led to its successful implementation. The partnerships within Project KINEs valued all stakeholders, who each brought expertise to help solve the problem (Home et al., 2021; Wood & McAteer, 2017). This focus ensured that parties at different locations and at different times were succinct in meeting the needs of middle school students.
The following sections explore salient elements that Project KINEs navigated throughout its implementation. Our hope is that by sharing Project KINEs’ evolution, those involved in community engagement pursuits can further embrace the collaborative nature of this work.
Evolution of Project KINE
Faculty Transitions
Early in the initial delivery of Project KINEs, the program was faced with our first obstacle, faculty turnover. The remaining Kinesiology junior faculty member took on the Project KINEs leadership role, and previously worked with partners on their campus to implement various STEAM-oriented projects tied to larger funding agencies (e.g., National Science Foundation). Having experience with STEAM education camps and grant-funded projects, he was aware of the potential impact Project KINEs stood to have in addition to the relative institution support. With this in mind, the faculty member quickly learned that taking on a leadership position for the implementation and adaption of Project KINEs required a collaborative partner to bolster the project aims. Given that kinesiology is grounded in physical education, a purposeful decision was made to identify a professional with expertise in innovative pedagogy. Prior to committing to guide Project KINEs, meaningful discussions further distinguished roles and brought the aims of the program into focus. These initial discussions laid the foundation for the collaborative process that would unfold. This included identifying programmatic needs, streamlining communication, coordinating meetings and orientations with various stakeholders, and establishing an authentic forum for creative suggestions and critical feedback.
With new leadership established, a more organized structured emerged. This led to multiple meetings in the community with grant funders, teachers, and students. Fostered by the creative nature that our program took on, we implemented innovative strategies to create multiple levels of impact. For instance, instead of expecting current teachers to create and implement new lessons and activities, our program had upper-level physical education undergraduate students at a peer institution create lessons plans that adhered to new state curricula standards and parameters. Local school educators and both institutional lead members reviewed and implemented these lessons. The undergraduates dedicated class dates and additional out-of-class time to lesson plan preparation. Quickly implementing this strategy provided further reasoning to include the stories and experiences of our teachers. Anecdotally, the teachers spoke of this unique partnership and recognized that Project KINEs not only impacted their elementary students, but also provided an opportunity for future educators to refine their lesson planning skills.
The teachers also shared multiple stories that recounted the need for assistance, as well as the desire for additional expertise to their classrooms. While many of the teachers who participated in Project KINEs were engaging, they reveled in the ability to collaborate with experts that could create novel pathways to materials that were otherwise challenging to create sustained student engagement. Kate (pseudonym) stated that she “feels like [the university] is a great resource, [especially as] a fresh new teacher to this school, I don’t know everything that’s out there so I’m trying to network.” Similarly, Jessica (pseudonym) indicated that collaboration with the university helped to provide practical applications:
It’s enabled me to come up with different, real-world lessons with the [equipment], and once we started, I asked questions, and we received help. Louisiana Tech University has been great about that… having specific things to do or the kits that I’ve heard about would be really awesome.
This diversity of thought amplified our ability to engage our community stakeholders and impact the lives of those involved in the program.
Stakeholder Buy-In
From the onset of Project KINEs, local teachers were asked by their school administrators to find new and engaging ways to stimulate interest in STEAM careers. This created an advantageous entry point for Project KINEs to build community partnerships while meeting the needs of local educators. Additionally, the common interest between partners helped maintain alignment with institutional values and goals while not compromising the integrity of student learning experiences and opportunities (Jones et al. 2020). Upon identifying new faculty collaborators, Project KINEs approached multiple schools to gauge school and teacher interest. Including school administrators helped create a partnership network to support a novel way of teaching STEAM content. Without much background in innovative physical education, the teachers were eager to engage with university experts in creating new methods and lessons that could achieve two goals. First, the administrators set goals to identify meaningful ways to include STEAM content in their classrooms. Secondly, given the nature of our program, we were able to address the declining commitment of schools to ensure students were given the opportunity to engage in an adequate amount of physical activity. To this aim, lessons blended activities together that required students to exercise or complete a moderate level of activity intensity with topics like energy production or the physics of movement. Recognizing that Project KINES had the opportunity to teach meaningful content tied to topics like engineering and math by using one’s body as the primary instrument, the teachers were quickly motivated to participate.
Having faculty leadership and educator buy-in, Project KINEs refined its scope and was able to begin implementation. The faculty believed that utilizing kinesiology principles, provided an innovative and engaging methodology to create lessons that would expose students to STEAM areas. To facilitate the creation of lesson plans, specific training, and content expertise, Project KINEs relied on the grant-awarding funding agency. This foundation’s aims included the facilitation of health-related initiatives, programs, and services to improve the quality of life for surrounding residents. Specific funding opportunities were intended to address the education and wellbeing of local students. Having access to such a resource became a valuable addition to the Project KINEs.
Perhaps the most salient members included in the program were the teachers implementing our program in their classrooms. Their ability to help guide the creation of lessons and provide meaningful feedback about the efficacy of lessons enhanced Project KINEs’ ability to be creative while adhering to state standards. Kate summarized this notion by stating, “I try to incorporate movement into my lessons; I get them moving so if kinesiology has a way to stimulate my students or give me ideas on how to make a [potentially] boring subject interesting, then yes.” To further connect the university faculty and teachers, professional development opportunities, including summer workshops and equipment training, helped support the delivery of the kinesiology/STEAM curricula in their classrooms.
Ambiguous Support
We initially lacked a roadmap for implementation of our program. We became aware that the tremendous amount of freedom from our funding agency was both empowering and daunting for junior faculty. Due to the initial partnership with the funding agency being established with different faculty leadership, moving forward required added effort to build rapport with the funders. This leadership transition created a degree of obligation to heighten the program’s quality and created aims that surpassed the initial program goals.
The overarching goals of the funders was to promote the wellbeing of youth in the surrounding community through ongoing programs that served local schools. While the original faculty leadership created the initial outcomes, Project KINEs was granted flexibility to revisit and update program goals based on the faculty transitions. The freedom allowed for a tremendous amount of creativity but also highlighted the need for meaningful metrics of progress. Without being provided specific outcomes and process goals, it became difficult to evaluate the efficacy of the program during the first of two years of funding. Throughout the transition, the evaluation and updated program objectives informed our delivery of year two of the program. Having the ability to adjust in response to logistical barriers or other unforeseen obstacles allowed our program leadership to be nimble to address the needs of our partners without adhering to strict evaluation criteria.
Implementation
With new faculty leadership in place and educators on board, the objectives and implementation strategy of Project KINEs were reviewed. At its onset, the goals of the program were limited and adhered to a vague methodology. Simplistic objectives were provided (e.g., enhance student and teacher exposure to kinesiology and STEAM topics) yet a plan for achieving these broad goals and ways to evaluate our successes was not included. This presented an opportunity to further adapt the program to include specific objectives and strategies to achieve those goals and also highlighted the generous flexibility our funding agency provided. While many may perceive this as a fortunate situation, this freedom made apparent that without structure, the specific goals of the program were not likely to be achieved in a manageable time or with the impact sought in the community.
Focused attention was paramount due to the vague implementation guidelines. We built an implementation framework that would assist in creating a unified direction for all partners and contributors. Drawing on areas of innovative pedagogy, community engagement, and education allowed for the development of a multi-phased program with ample checks for implementation and program efficacy. This heightened the need for coordinated communication among the partnerships but ultimately created a roadmap for success that could be followed and adapted as needs changed throughout the program year.
Logistics Between Universities
With numerous partners involved in Project KINEs, being able to manage and guide the goals or needs of the various partners was pivotal for the program’s success. This meant being aware of the needs of faculty and students, as well as those involved in the grant on the periphery (e.g., funding agency, local school administrators). Navigating the needs of so many parties required purposeful coordination that identified areas of concern while also presenting pathways for success. These pathways to success varied greatly as the needs of each partnership evolved and garnered specific interests. For instance, faculty members involved in Project KINEs were asked to create structure and roadmaps to success that also included administrative work, progress reporting, and designing elements that communicated the efficacy of the program to the academic field (e.g., conference engagement, academic publications, and local teacher workshops). This varied greatly from the goals of teachers, local students, and undergraduate students at a peer university. Coordinating strategies for all parties to garner success throughout the program required relatively constant communication, foresight in planning, willingness to provide and receive constructive feedback, and purposeful evaluation of progress toward the various goals. Having more partners involved did not simply result in being able to share the workload but instead demanded more time and attention to detail to ensure that all parties’ goals were met and needs and concerns were addressed. Maintaining the focus for everyone within the collaborative partnerships helped keep aligned with common goals and joint interests (Strier, 2011).
As our web of partnerships grew to include new faculty members, various administrators, and teachers at local schools, Project KINEs was approached by additional faculty at our universities to become involved in a collaborative effort to create curriculum kits that could be adapted to different disciplines. Ancillary to the primary aims of Project KINEs, these new collaborative opportunities required further coordinating with faculty of different disciplines (e.g., mechanical engineering, biomedical engineering) that were not previously included but ultimately lead to increased involvement and support that further enabled the delivery of Project KINEs effectively and to new areas. These new partnerships allowed Project KINEs to reach another level of adaptation to create a deliverable kit that could now go beyond our local schools and reach a broader audience. This further demonstrated the advantages of have local support, and collaborative interests that amplified the potential impact of our program.
Lessons Learned
An important goal of Project KINEs was learning from service. Given the nature of our project, faculty leadership were dedicated to providing opportunities for community stakeholders and students alike to learn from services that could build connections between kinesiology and STEAM disciplines. In academia, the emphasis is often focused on the production of knowledge through novel studies and designs implemented in communities that can be replicated at a larger scale and impact surrounding communities later by practitioners. Wood (2017) adds that additional research challenges occur within academia, specifically related to rigid ethical requirements and confined time frames where inquiry occurs. Being cognizant of the traditional teaching, research, and service model to which academic disciplines adhere, Project KINEs sought to integrate research endeavors with service practitioners in our communities.
The benefit of designing our program in this fashion was demonstrating the advocacy of research programs that elicit a real-time impact through the engagement of local partners and leveraging our strengths to meet student needs. Nicotera and colleagues (2011) states that scholarship of engagement:
…emphasizes the mutually beneficial relationships between higher education and community partners, the reciprocal connections between theory and practice, the importance of involving students in community-based research, and making scholarly activities relevant and useful for communities, as well as the academy (37).
To that end, interacting with multiple entities throughout the entirety of the project enriched and benefited all parties involved.
The Importance of Partnerships
The university-level research team, k-12 teachers, undergraduate students, and funding agency all contributed to the project’s success. These partnerships evolved throughout the program, but their roles were heavily enmeshed. The funders enabled our team while keeping the program’s scope at the forefront. While the higher education team wrote and developed specific outcomes, teachers applied practicality and understood the nuances of the classroom. Adding undergraduate students allowed for authentic experiences and accentuated the importance of community-university connections and relationships. According to Dey and colleagues (2009), only 34% of undergraduates perceived that their institutions were committed to contributing to the community, which decreased throughout their time on campus. Experiences such as Project KINES provide authentic opportunities to showcase the importance of relationships between universities and their surrounding communities and the expertise each partner contributed (Home et al., 2021; Wood & McAteer, 2017).
Trebil-Smith (2019) states that rather than institutions or organizations, individuals are often the recipients of transformative experiences. Project KINES was built upon the connections of key individuals from teachers to faculty, students, and community members through the local funding agency. The teachers who participated were able to select the equipment that best fit their classes, and the faculty at Louisiana Tech University provided the items through the grant and more importantly the training to help set the teachers up for success. Training helped build teacher confidence to implement the equipment into their lessons. As Megan (pseudonym) stated that through the new equipment purchases, she hopes to expand STEAM principles for her junior high students: “I like to expose them to as much as possible, [especially when] they may not get opportunities in their regular classroom… and [the students] are curious, so anything that we can do to make learning fun for them.” The ability of key individuals working in harmony helped provide successes in all facets of the project.
Proper Planning
Throughout the iterations and challenges of the project, proper planning helped us pursue our goals. These challenges or barriers were often solved through thoughtful discussions, which helped recognize where strengths and weaknesses could be complemented by those involved in the program. For instance, while the university faculty understood the theoretical underpinnings of the program lessons, they struggled to translate the theory to STEAM classroom settings. Being able to recognize that we as academics understood the theoretical underpinnings of our work, the ecological validity of its implementation was often missing. Open discussions with experts in specific research areas, as well as practitioners who engaged with youth who we were hoping to impact, was meaningful for achieving our goals even as they adapted over time.
The research team employed deliberate plans for implementation through all facets of the program, which was strengthened by the combined expertise of the involved parties. The k-12 teachers brought knowledge of the target audience from their learners of various grade levels, while the research team provided knowledge and background on kinesiology principles and pedagogy. The consistent communication between all involved individuals provided opportunities to share project expectations and limitations and the development of strategies to address issues as they arose. Finally, the flexibility of the funding agency provided necessary resources and the ability to bring the project to fruition.
Keeping the Outcomes in Mind
Another deliberate element ingrained in Project KINEs was staying true to the aims of program and stakeholder needs. One strategy included ensuring teachers’ voices were incorporated throughout our program to avoid the one-sided approach driven by the interest of academics. For example, Kate stated that working with Project KINEs:
was a very positive [experience]. [Louisiana Tech Grant Liaison] was honest about what we would have to do from the beginning. She didn’t say it wasn’t going to be any work, but she was honest … It was very easy to see that it would benefit our students and that’s our main goal together, to benefit our students.
According to Bengle and colleagues (2021), building trust is a critical feature of successful community-university partnerships. By involving the teachers from the onset, we ensured teachers were able to ask questions, voice concerns, and celebrate their successes. Not only was the open dialogue impactful at a personal level, but the added communication provided opportunities to share intended outcomes with our grant funders. This demonstrated not only the achievement of objective standards of success, but we were additionally able to showcase those who could speak to the impact that the program had on our community members. This notion was highlighted during a nutrition unit, where Megan stated the students had ownership of the project and will:
remember forever because they actually found the project [on their own], practiced it in the classroom, presented it, [and then it was posted on Facebook for their] families, grandparents, and we all got to watch it… when they have ownership of what the project is, there’s more buy-in for them.
Using the outcomes as a guide helped the team navigate the early faculty transitions, vague strategies, and program development and evolution.
Impossibility of Rigidity
We felt this was an important step as oftentimes we as researchers lose sight of the literal impact our work can have within our communities. Reaching out to those involved and hearing that our program was meeting and exceeding teacher and student needs validated our process and built our confidence. The plethora of individuals from different entities also provided opportunities to solve one particular problem within the context of the k-12 school setting. In Project KINES, teachers at the schools involved in the project were concerned about the implementation of the new state science standards. Megan noted that “…with the state standards being new, teachers are noticing that their old curriculums aren’t working anymore … it’s a very important time to have a STEAM component, which lends itself to more hands-on content.” The ability of the research team to shift the project focus, with the blessing of the funding agency, helped set the teachers up for success in traversing the new standards.
The flexibility allotted for Project KINEs also allowed for the relatively late addition of the STEAM curriculum kit development. The added partnership of research faculty engaged in work addressing the National Academy of Engineering’s Grand Challenges of Engineering helped provide a framework and coalesce teacher-selected equipment and lesson plan development to maximize the funding opportunity. Kate affirmed that the kits were beneficial, stating that she received “positive feedback from parents and students…the students were excited because they saw [the kits] and they started building the basic units again.” Megan also stated that after implementing the kits, students had “more of an awareness of what Kinesiology is and how it is used in all aspects of the [students’ lives]…It makes it more real and applies to them personally.” Without the flexibility to adapt and avoid rigidity, Project KINES would have been limited in its effectiveness, thus shortchanging all stakeholders involved.
Conclusion
In today’s connected society, collaborations are of the utmost importance in developing and implementing successful projects. Community engagement is defined as the “collaboration between institutions of higher education and their larger communities (local, regional/state, national, global) for the mutually beneficial exchange of knowledge and resources in a context of partnership and reciprocity” (Carnegie, 2006). Project KINEs was only effective due to the partnerships within the surrounding community and abroad. These include the flexibility of the funding agency to allow for the project evolution, the local university’s willingness to support the program, the expertise of the education students/faculty in developing the resource kits, and the community’s readiness to work in harmony to finalize and deliver the actual lessons within the kit. All facets made for a successful community-engaged project.
Funding Information
This project was made possible in partnership with The Lincoln Health Foundation of Ruston, Louisiana.
Competing Interests
The authors have no competing interests to declare.