Evaluating the Health of Community/University Partnerships: Experiential Learning Practice with an Aim Toward the Public Good

This article looks at campus and community partner relationships, and how they can be assessed. Specifically, readers will find the results of a case study that explores the “health” of the relationship between an urban university and its local nonprofit partners. Additionally, the Community Partnership Health Assessment Framework (CPHAF) is introduced, which is a six-step process that practitioners engaged in service learning, internships aimed at the public good, and volunteer programs can use to evaluate the “health” of their relationships with community partners for community-based learning (CBL). For our current purpose, CBL includes academic service learning, internships, and volunteer work, however the CPHAF process is a general evaluation framework. A general tool is valuable because many universities have partnerships where students arrive from various programs such as volunteers, service learners, interns, or other. The discussion section provides a detailed description of the Community Partnership Health Assessment Framework (CPHAF), and the case study is provided as an example of its use.