Introduction

Community-based learning and service-learning have both been recognized by the Association of American Colleges and Universities as high-impact practices in undergraduate teaching (Chittum et al., 2022; Kuh, 2008). Pedagogies that advance critical global inquiry provide students with powerful approaches to engage with complex questions related to the interdependence of political, economic, and social systems in both domestic and international contexts (Alonso García & Longo, 2013; Longo & Saltmarsh, 2011; Whitehead, 2015). As defined by Hartman et al. (2018), community-based global learning (CBGL) provides a model of critical global inquiry that blends traditional conceptualizations of community-based learning and service-learning in a way that strives to both advance collaborative community development and mitigate many of the recognized potential pitfalls of these efforts to community partners. CBGL extends Mitchell’s (2018) conceptualization of critical service-learning by focusing on deeper considerations of student experiences and critical global inquiry within broad, multi-level, and globally interconnected systems. The best practices found in Hartman’s CBGL model are grounded in the principles of Fair Trade Learning (FTL), which provide an aspirational framework of academic program standards that facilitate interconnectedness, equity, and justice in both domestic and international contexts (Hartman, 2015; Hartman et al., 2014). FTL strongly emphasizes the concept of “dual purposes”—the assertion that positive outcomes for both higher education programs and partner communities must always be reciprocal and equally valued (Hartman et al., 2014).

Academic institutions frequently frame their teaching, research, and community engagement activities in ways that align with the United Nation’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and associated Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs; https://sdgs.un.org/goals), and the connections between student learning, community partnerships, and societal growth are being increasingly emphasized within academic spaces (Chankseliani & McCowan, 2021). Sustainable Development Goal 17, “Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development,” recognizes multi-stakeholder partnerships as important vehicles for mobilizing and sharing knowledge, expertise, technologies, and financial resources to support the achievement of the Agenda for Sustainable Development (https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal17). To create and implement ethical CBGL programs, academic institutions will need to focus on capacity building, creating multi-stakeholder partnerships, and identifying and attaining resources to sustain these partnerships. Furthermore, Chankseliani and McCowan (2021) note that universities have an “important role in the SDGs, as a driver for the achievement of the full set of goals, through their role in human formation, knowledge production and innovation” (p. 1). As academic institutions partner with local, national, and international communities and explore global challenges related to the SDGs, it will be essential for academics to have accessible assessment instruments that can be used in benchmarking, program planning, and program evaluation. These tools are critical for identifying the benefits and gaps in student learning outcomes, in creating and sustaining mutually beneficial partnerships, and in understanding community impacts.

Over the past 15 years, several resources have been produced for the purpose of guiding and/or assessing various components of CBGL programs. The VALUE rubrics produced by the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) have been widely utilized in the evaluation of student learning outcomes throughout higher education in the United States (Association of American Colleges and Universities, 2009). A subset of four of these rubrics (Civic Engagement – Local and Global, Ethical Reasoning, Global Learning, and Intercultural Competence) are especially useful for evaluation within CBGL contexts. Each rubric consists of a set of action statements related to students’ academic behaviors and habits (e.g., “Demonstrates evidence of adjustment in own attitudes and beliefs because of working within and learning from diversity of communities and cultures. Promotes others’ engagement with diversity.”) that are rated on a scale from 1 (“benchmark”) to 4 (“capstone”). Although these VALUE rubrics are an important tool to measure student growth, they focus exclusively on student learning outcomes and do not provide any evaluative utility related to CBGL community partner relationships, administrative/operational practices, or the ethical/philosophical orientations of the programs themselves.

One of these gaps has been addressed by the Transformational Relationship Evaluation Scale (TRES), which was designed to evaluate components of just and effective community partnerships (Clayton et al., 2010; Kniffin et al., 2020). Specifically, the TRES utilizes respondents’ answers to questions regarding the current and desired status of partner relationships across ten domains (such as “Decision-making” and “Role of this partnership in each partner’s work”) to provide a relative measure of the degree to which an academic-community relationship functions in ways that could be viewed as exploitive, transactional, or transformational (Kniffin et al., 2020). Much like the VALUE rubrics, the TRES is intended to examine one specific facet of CBGL programs and must be used in parallel with other instruments if a comprehensive program evaluation is intended.

The CORE Humanitarian Standard (https://corehumanitarianstandard.org/the-standard), designed by a diverse representation of humanitarian and development organizations to provide programmatic guidance within international humanitarian contexts, also has potential value in the assessment of CBGL programs. The CORE Humanitarian Standard consists of nine commitments that organizations are encouraged to make as they serve vulnerable and marginalized populations. The underlying fundamentals of these commitments that support community benefit are germane to the work conducted by many CBGL programs, and their wording can be easily modified to better fit different academic contexts. However, the CORE Humanitarian Standard remains a collection of broad statements, and like the other instruments described above, is of limited utility when used by itself to evaluate CBGL programs.

Within the academic Fair Trade Learning community, two resources have been developed to facilitate the evaluation of CBGL programs. The first is the Fair Trade Learning (FTL) Standards, authored by Hartman et al. (2014), and the second is the Guidelines for Community Engaged Learning Experiences Abroad, created by Owen et al. (2022). The FTL standards (Hartman et al., 2014), incorporate best practices related to student learning, community partner relationships, dual purposes and mutual benefit, sustainability, and intentional individual reflective practice. These standards offer benchmark goals for program organization and operations to work toward. The FTL standards and benchmarking goals are not necessarily well suited to, or are written for, constrained real-world evaluative contexts, where resource and temporal limitations exist. Additionally, the FTL standards were not designed in a way that supports comparisons that seek to demonstrate programmatic improvements. The Global Engagement Survey (GES; Hartman et al., 2015) is a robust assessment instrument grounded in the principles of FTL and has demonstrated value in the student-centered evaluation of components of FTL over time (Gendle & Tapler, 2022). Because the GES intentionally focuses on student learning outcomes, it is limited in its ability to serve as an omnibus assessment of program philosophies and operational practices.

The Guidelines for Community Engaged Learning Experiences Abroad have operationalized the FTL standards for multifaceted evaluative use within the context of international education (Owen et al., 2022). Since these Guidelines were written specifically for use in international settings, they do not always function well in the evaluation of domestic CBGL programs and cannot be used to compare both international and domestic CBGL programs at a college or university. And much like the FTL standards upon which they are based, the Guidelines provide an aspirational “gold standard” and do not easily allow for the assessment of programmatic changes and growth/improvements over time.

Academic institutions could benefit from an evaluation tool that can comprehensively assess programmatic FTL goals in both domestic and international contexts. The work detailed in this manuscript emerged from efforts related to a CAA Academic Alliance Innovate/Collaborate grant (IN/CO, https://www.caa-academics.org/in-co-grant-program/) that was awarded to the corresponding author and a team of faculty and staff from Drexel University, Elon University, the University of Delaware, and the University of North Carolina Wilmington. Titled “Preparing Students and Institutions to Engage in Community Based-Learning,” this grant sought to enhance both the ethical framing of engagement with community partners by academic institutions and the depth of student experiences. As the grant team wrestled with multiple and innovative strategies necessary to properly benchmark and assess best practices in CBGL, one of the faculty participants (Dr. Allison Karpyn, Co-Director of the Center for Research in Education and Social Policy (CRESP) and Professor of Human Development and Family Sciences at the University of Delaware) noted that no comprehensive evaluation tools existed that can evaluate both program and university-wide CBGL program goals related to FTL. As a result, a subset of the grant team at Elon University created a novel and aspirational benchmarking and evaluation instrument for CBGL programs (the Community Engagement and Partnership Inventory, or CEPI) that is presented here.

This article serves to introduce the CEPI to community-based/community-engaged learning practitioners in higher education, detail the conceptualization and design of this new tool, provide administration guidelines and considerations regarding its use in academic settings, and share a description of a pilot of the instrument’s use. This manuscript is intended to function as the primary reference and access to the CEPI instrument for community-based global learning practitioners.

The Community Engagement and Partnership Inventory (CEPI): Conceptualization and Design

The CEPI (Appendix 1) was designed to serve as a practical, comprehensive, flexible, and open-source instrument for academic programs and institutions to self-evaluate and measure CBGL goals related to FTL in both domestic and international contexts, and to track the progress (and barriers) towards these goals over time. The CEPI incorporates critical components of each of the assessments reviewed above into one evaluation tool, expanding utility of the currently available resources.

The CEPI can be utilized to identify both strengths and gaps in community partnerships across multiple contexts and levels of analysis, from individual program partnerships to institution-wide community engagement paradigms and practices. The CEPI can be effectively employed when conceptualizing a new partnership; as guidance for initiating partnership development; in assessment of ongoing partnerships; in evaluation of the community engagement practices of a program or institutional unit; or to assess a college or university’s overall community engagement efforts. Importantly, the CEPI was also explicitly designed to serve as a reference compendium of CBGL best-practice standards for academic institutions.

Much like the FTL standards and the Guidelines for Community Engaged Learning Experiences Abroad, the CEPI utilizes program outcomes based in FTL that are intentionally aspirational. But unlike these other resources, the CEPI was specifically intended to support the measurement/tracking of ongoing programmatic improvements in relation to these goals over time. The CEPI explicitly encourages positive and program-specific developmental progress. It can assist programs in refining their own CBGL goals in ways that cultivate broad and ongoing journeys toward continued and iterative improvement rather than emphasizing a singular focus on the achievement of the highest level of all goals. Each academic program, community partnership, and institution is unique and faces specific constraints to temporal, financial, and human resources that inherently challenge the practical implementation of aspirational goals to their fullest extent. The CEPI is intended to support the premise that the collective process of ongoing programmatic enhancement is truly more important than the final outcome alone. Engagement with the CEPI also brings into sharp relief the tensions that exist between aspirational ideals and the ability to actualize these ideals in real-world practice. The critical examination of these conflicts within specific institutional contexts has the potential to drive programmatic adaptation and reflection in interesting and useful ways.

The CEPI consists of 16 topical subcategories with a total of 147 closed-ended response items (Table 1).

Each of the CEPI response items consists of a statement related to program goals, activities, practices, philosophy, or orientation (e.g., “The partnership is intentionally designed using asset-based approaches, from the beginning, to draw on community expertise as well as strengthen capacities in the local partner community.”). Respondents answer each item in each section using the following 6-point Likert-type scale:

• N/A = not applicable to program/academic unit/institution

• 0 = program/academic unit/institution has never considered doing this

• 1 = program/academic unit/institution has considered doing this, but has never executed it in practice

• 2 = program/academic unit/institution occasionally does this

• 3 = program/academic unit/institution does this at least half of the time

• 4 = program/academic unit/institution nearly always does this

• 5 = program/academic unit/institution requires this as part of its everyday operations

The subcategories and individual items of CEPI were designed to comprehensively assess all the CBGL best practices included in the AAC&U VALUE rubrics, TRES, CORE Humanitarian Standard, Fair Trade Learning standards, and the Guidelines for Community Engaged Learning Experiences Abroad. After thoroughly reviewing each of these documents, the authors created an initial draft of the CEPI subcategories and items and referenced these items against the resources listed above to ensure completeness and inclusion of all major concepts. This initial draft of the CEPI was then reviewed by the entire grant team and multiple practitioners within the Fair Trade Learning/CBGL community. Reviewers were recruited via personal invitations from the authors and through a public solicitation that was prominently featured in the Community-Based Global Learning Collaborative’s (https://www.cbglcollab.org/) monthly e-newsletter. Critical advice that substantively enhanced the final version of the CEPI was received from a variety of professionals in the field, including faculty and academic staff from institutions varying in size, mission, and geographic location, as well as professionals employed by non-profits outside of academia. This diversity of perspectives provided valuable insights, particularly regarding issues that were not immediately obvious to the authors. For example, multiple academic staff reviewers expressed concerns about the length of the instrument and potential survey fatigue and made it clear that the production of a condensed version of the CEPI that could be more easily completed by respondents would be a critically important outcome. To this end, the CEPI-Short Form (described in more detail below) was created using the process described above by identifying the fundamental themes in each subcategory of the CEPI and creating condensed items that appropriately addressed these themes.

Administration

Given the detailed nature of the individual CEPI items, senior administrative offices (such as the President, Provost, or Dean) may not be able to provide accurate answers regarding specific program operations. For this reason, the completion of the CEPI by senior institutional leaders is discouraged. For all CEPI administrations, it is critical to retain generalized descriptors of who is providing the answers (individual faculty members, institutional program director, etc.), to provide context for interpretation. This information can be provided without the use of personal identifiers but should be included with all CEPI response data. In cases where the CEPI is to be utilized as a macro/institutional level metric, it is recommended that each individual program collect micro-level data on their own programming, and then submit this data to a central administrative entity (such as an Office of Institutional Research, Director, Dean, or Provost) that can then conduct a macro-level analysis using aggregate institutional data.

Subcategory 8 of the CEPI specifically addresses diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) considerations, which are critical to both the formation and maintenance of ethical community partnerships and to equitable student engagement with, and access to, CBGL opportunities. The principles of reciprocity, equity, and justice are also fundamental to the FTL model upon which the CEPI is based (Hartman et al., 2014). Because the scope of the CEPI is intentionally broad, its use may inform local, regional, and national debates on DEI regarding specific institutional CBGL practices as well as associated issues that broadly impact higher education. The CEPI can also generate essential data about the service of colleges and universities as anchor institutions in broader community spaces and serve to highlight systemic inequalities that may exist.

We believe that the inclusion of issues germane to DEI are critical in any comprehensive evaluation of CBGL programming. However, these concerns have become highly politicized within higher education in the United States, and it may not be possible to assess the items in Subcategory 8 in some institutional contexts. At the time of this manuscript’s writing, DEI-related activities are being discouraged on some private campuses and are explicitly forbidden by law at public institutions in several states. Because of the CEPI’s modular design, any or all DEI-related items can be removed by users in campus environments where such activities are unwelcome or illegal, and the scoring scheme (detailed below) can be appropriately modified as needed.

Scoring

For each of the 16 subcategories, the CEPI Section Score is calculated by summing the total value of responses and dividing that figure by ([the number of items in that section] × 5). The Overall Score for the CEPI is calculated by summing the total value of responses across all items and dividing that figure by 735. The Section Scores and overall Score are expressed as percentages by default. Note that these scoring instructions presume that all items in every subcategory are applicable, and that a 0–6 score is provided by the respondent for each item. In cases where one or more items are not applicable (N/A) or when a response was not given, the denominators must be adjusted accordingly before the Section Score or Overall Score is calculated. The CEPI was designed in a way that allows for repeated administration, and the Section and Overall Scores from such repeated administration can be used to track outcomes from program development efforts over time.

The CEPI was conceptualized as a comprehensive meta-checklist of best practices in CBGL for internal use by campus programs, and not as a rigorous research instrument. Due to the highly variable contexts within which CBGL programs operate, the CEPI is not intended to serve as a generalizable research tool, and it has not undergone robust psychometric evaluation. Furthermore, while community partner organizations may find the CEPI to be of value, this instrument was primarily designed and intended for use by academic entities. However, in the spirit of equitable co-creation of partnerships with local communities, it remains imperative that CBGL programs use the CEPI to drive active and ongoing conversations with community partners around program activities, development, evaluation, and change. Ideally, evaluation plans that utilize the CEPI should also incorporate formal instruments (such as the Community Benefit Survey (CBS); Gendle et al., 2023) that assess CBGL programs from the perspective of community partners. The development of the CBS offers a model of significant community involvement at all stages of program evaluation, including co-development of the assessment instrument, community-led data gathering protocols and co-analysis of data, and the shared authorship of final peer-reviewed publications and academic outcomes (Gendle et al., 2023).

CEPI Short Form (CEPI-SF)

To facilitate use in situations with substantial temporal limitations, a short-form version of the CEPI (CEPI-SF) was also produced. The CEPI-SF captures the fundamental program attributes and practices that the full-length CEPI measures, albeit with significantly less detail. The short form CEPI collapses across the CEPI’s 16 subcategories and includes a total of 47 items. The Overall Score for the CEPI-SF is calculated by summing the total value of responses across all items and dividing that figure by 235. Just like with the full-length CEPI, in cases where one or more items are not applicable (N/A) or a response was not given, the denominator must be adjusted accordingly before the Overall Score is calculated. Given the already brief and summative nature of the CEPI-SF, user-based deletion of additional questions is not recommended, unless the questions under consideration are truly irrelevant to the program being assessed. The items on the CEPI-SF can be cross-referenced with the full-length CEPI to identify which subcategory each item belongs.

Pilot Program Evaluation Using the CEPI

A pilot evaluation using the CEPI was conducted on the multi-year, cohort-based undergraduate CBGL program—the Periclean Scholars Program at Elon University in Elon, NC, USA (https://www.elon.edu/u/academics/project-pericles/periclean-scholars-program/), led by the authors. The pilot assessment/evaluation found the CEPI to be especially useful in two contexts. First, the CEPI demonstrated significant utility as a concise benchmark of best practices that can be shared with program faculty to facilitate the implementation of operations that are consistently in line with these practices. These faculty expressed that it was helpful to have the CEPI as a reference for best practices when they developed assignments and community partnerships for their own student cohorts. In this way, the CEPI also served to help standardize practices across multiple course sections and cohorts of students. Second, the CEPI proved to be a valuable tool to better understand areas where the program’s actions are already closely aligned with these best practices, and where continued improvement is needed. In this pilot evaluation, the CBGL program examined received an Overall Score of 86%. However, scrutiny of the Section Scores made it clear that the program is currently excelling in two areas (Student Curricular and Co-curricular Matters: 100%; Partnership Safety and Security: 94%) and further identified areas where ongoing enhancements are required (Sustainable and Equitable Partner Relationships: 73%; Environmental Sustainability: 80%). This outcome demonstrates the utility of the individual Section Scores, as they allow faculty and administrators to focus improvement efforts on the specific components of their programs that are most in need of attention.

Flexibility of Use

Because of the CEPI’s length, completing all subcategories may be difficult to manage, and not all CBGL programs may find it desirable or useful to do so. For this reason, each of the 16 subcategories has been designed to also function as a “standalone” topical module, and individual programs/institutions can choose which subcategories they would like to use or not use based on the scope and content of their own evaluation goals. In this way, the CEPI has significant utility for strategic planning, as programs may choose to exclusively focus on one or more subcategories that are germane to their specific goals and look for positive changes over time on these scales in response to program enhancements. This modularity also enhances the CEPI’s usefulness to institutions or programs that are resource or temporally constrained and may not have the capacity to evaluate the contents of all 16 subcategories.

The CEPI can be further tailored based on the unique attributes of any community partnership. As discussed in the scoring instructions, if one or more of the response items is not relevant or appropriate based on the nature or structure of the partnership (e.g., “Community partners are co-creator of the student learning outcomes on the syllabus.”), N/A can be chosen as a response option, or the item(s) can simply be removed from the administration, and the scoring scheme adjusted accordingly. Additionally, scorers can combine subcategories 10, 11, and 12 to obtain a single meta-score related to partnership financial practices.

Limitations

In their work, Hartman et al. (2014) emphasize the highly aspirational nature of the FTL standards. Because these standards are the foundation upon which the CEPI was built, this instrument is similarly ambitious in scope. It is therefore important to recognize the ways in which the use and utility of the CEPI might be limited in a variety of institutional contexts. CBGL programs that are constructed with the FTL standards in mind often require significant financial and personnel support, and such programs may not be realizable at smaller and/or resource constrained institutions. Programs may also be challenged to identify the resources required to support evaluation efforts of any type, and the size and breadth of the CEPI may be beyond what these programs can reasonably handle. And as discussed earlier, an increasing number of CBGL programs now operate within institutional environments where DEI and social justice work are discouraged or not legally permitted. Although the CEPI attempts to address these challenges through both a modular design that provides for extensive user-determined flexibility of use and a shortened form (the CEPI-SF), the CEPI may nevertheless not be well-suited for use within these contexts.

Conclusion

As CBGL programs become ubiquitous on college/university campuses in the United States and engage with processes and outcomes linked to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, open-access evaluation instruments for these programs are needed that can both serve as benchmarks and monitor enhancements, challenges, and changes over time. The Community Engagement and Partnership Inventory (CEPI) provides a comprehensive set of aspirational CBGL best practice goals in an easy-to-use, assessment-friendly format, and the CEPI-SF offers a short-form version for evaluation strategies that do not require the level of detail that the CEPI provides. At present, no publicly available CBGL program assessment resource exists that offers the CEPI’s depth, breadth, flexibility, and focus on community engagement. The CEPI builds upon existing high-quality instruments and guidelines such as the AAC&U VALUE rubrics (Association of American Colleges and Universities, 2009), the Transformational Relationship Evaluation Scale (TRES; Clayton et al., 2010; Kniffin et al., 2020), the CORE Humanitarian Standard (https://corehumanitarianstandard.org/the-standard), the Fair Trade Learning Standards (Hartman et al., 2014), and the Guidelines for Community Engaged Learning Experiences Abroad (Owen et al., 2022), and integrates the contents of these resources in a novel and comprehensive way.

The pilot evaluation of the multi-year, undergraduate CBGL cohort program at the authors’ home institution demonstrated the utility of the CEPI. Furthermore, the CEPI pilot provided a detailed and granular evaluation of a programmatic alignment with aspirational CBGL best practices based in FTL. Additionally, the findings highlighted specific areas/subcategories where the program excelled and where additional attention and enhancement was required. The ability to identify specific areas for improvement proved critical in the programmatic self-study efforts. The findings of the pilot assessment assisted leadership with reorienting programmatic planning related to annual goals as well as completing revisions to several goals within the program’s current five-year strategic plan. For example, the programmatic leadership took a deeper and more critical look at the carbon footprint related to the program’s international travel activities and created additional protocols to ensure the formation and maintenance of more wholly equitable relationships with community partner organizations going forward.

From the outset, the CEPI was intentionally designed with modularity in mind. Each of the instrument’s 16 subsections can function as a “standalone” topical module, which individual programs/institutions can then utilize to craft custom administration protocols that fit their own evaluation goals. At present, another member of the CAA Academic Alliance Innovate/Collaborate grant team, at the University of North Carolina Wilmington (UNCW), is successfully utilizing a select group of the CEPI subsections in an internal evaluation of specific facets of their institution’s CBGL programming. This pilot evaluation has demonstrated the functional utility of the CEPI to serve as a diverse “toolbox” of units that can be used by themselves or in any combination to provide custom evaluation resources that closely match individual institutional needs.

Although the design of the CEPI emphasizes extensive modularity, it remains unknown if this modularity is functional when employed across a variety of institutional contexts. Future research is needed that examines the CEPI’s use across a diverse set of institutions and with different types of CBGL programs. Future users of the CEPI should consider establishing a community of practice that could facilitate cross-institutional collaborations to better understand the flexibility and utility of the CEPI within distinct institutional contexts. Such collaborative work would also likely generate findings that could be utilized to update and refine the CEPI over time, so that it can better serve a wide variety of institution and program types.

Overall, the CEPI provides support for robust evaluations of programmatic engagement with the principles of FTL in a way that allows for flexible methods of administration and scoring. The CEPI and CEPI-SF (along with community-centered assessments such as the Community Benefit Survey; Gendle et al., 2023) provide much needed capacity in the development and enhancement of CBGL programs and can play an important role in aligning academic CBGL initiatives with the United Nation’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and associated Sustainable Development Goals.

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by an Innovate/Collaborate (IN/CO) grant from the CAA Academic Alliance. The authors are indebted to the numerous community-based global learning practitioners who graciously provided us with valuable feedback on earlier drafts of the CEPI. The authors would like to specifically thank Jess Boersma (University of North Carolina Pembroke), Carrie Eaves (Elon University), Caitlin Ferrarini (Worcester Polytechnic Institute), Bob Frigo (Elon University), Eric Hartman (Haverford College), Allison Karpyn (University of Delaware), Leann Moore (University of Delaware), Phillip Motley (Elon University), Susan Serra (University of Delaware), Maureen Vandermaas-Peeler (Elon University), and Andrew Zitcer (Drexel University) for ongoing critical conversations and professional fellowship that collectively supported the development of the CEPI.

Author Bios

Mathew H. Gendle is the Director of Project Pericles and is a Professor of Psychology at Elon University. His research and professional interests include ethics and best practices in higher education-community organization partnerships in international settings, as well as disciplinary research in neuropharmacology, consciousness, and the social and geopolitical components of drug use and commerce. Gendle has cultivated and supported a multi-year partnership between Elon and Sarvodaya, the largest and oldest NGO in Sri Lanka.

Amanda S. Tapler is the Associate Director of Project Pericles and Senior Lecturer of Public Health Studies at Elon University. Her research is rooted in Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR) and Diffusion of Innovation. Her scholarly interests focus on the ethics and best practices in higher education-community organization partnerships in international settings; mentoring of undergraduate students in global engagement; intercultural learning; and undergraduate research in global and diverse contexts. Tapler has partnered with the Comprehensive Rural Health Project (CRHP) in Jamkhed, India, for more than 10 years, offering a unique public health practicum, and experiential learning experiences including community based participatory research projects in rural health and sustainable development.

Appendix 1: The Community Engagement and Partnership Inventory (CEPI)

For each of the 16 subcategories, the CEPI Section Score is calculated by summing the total value of responses and dividing that figure by ([the number of items in that section] × 5). The Overall Score for the CEPI is calculated by summing the total value of responses across all items and dividing that figure by 735. The Section Scores and overall Score are expressed as percentages by default. Note that this presumes that all items in every subcategory are applicable, and that a 0–6 score is provided by the respondent for each item. In cases where one or more items are not applicable (N/A) or when a response was not given, the denominators must be adjusted accordingly before the Section Score or Overall Score is calculated.

1) Sustainable and Equitable Partner Relationships

1. All community partnerships are constructed around the concept of dual purposes—where student learning and community outcomes are always accorded equal importance.

2. Community partners are included as co-creators from the conceptualization of the partnership.

3. The partnership is intentionally designed using asset-based approaches, from the beginning, to draw on community expertise as well as strengthen capacities in the local partner community.

4. The partnership is intentionally designed, from the beginning, to minimize potential harms to the local partner community.

5. Community partners are co-creators of the goals and objectives related to the partnership.

6. Community partners have the opportunity to co-create memoranda of understanding or similar written partnership agreements (formal or informal), in both English and local language(s), that clearly outline the goals, objectives, and desired outcomes of the partnership.

7. Community partners have a primary role in determining the timing and duration of the partnership, as well as the number of students, faculty, and staff included in the partnership.

8. Community partners have a meaningful and central role in the design of curricular/co-curricular program components.

9. Community partners are offered the opportunity to have a meaningful role in the creation of learning objectives for the partnership and/or class syllabi.

10. Community partners are offered the opportunity to have a significant role in how students, faculty, and staff are recruited and selected for participation in the partnership.

11. Community partners are offered the opportunity to have a significant role in how the program is presented to potential participants (i.e. program website and other marketing materials), particularly in regards to language and photos that are used to represent the program.

12. Community partners have a clear and widely understood mechanism through which they can raise concerns about the partnership, and exercise agency related to these concerns, at every point in development and execution of the partnership.

13. There is a widely understood process in place for community partners to regularly evaluate, adjust, and re-articulate the goals, scope, and strategies for the partnership at any time, either on their own or in collaboration with the other members of the partnership. This process includes both verbal and written ways to communicate.

14. Community partners have the agency to initiate dialogue about terminating the partnership, or act to terminate the partnership, without incurring significant hardship or harm, at any time.

15. The program has specific policies in place regarding the ethical termination of a community relationship

16. Community partners co-create, co-administer, and co-interpret all evaluation strategies and metrics related to the partnership.

17. Community partners have a role in deciding formats for dissemination of scholarship resulting from the partnership. Community partners are offered the opportunity to serve as co-authors/co-presenters for any presentation, report, or published scholarship resulting from the partnership.

Total raw score (sum of responses) = CEPI Section Score (total raw score/85) =%

2) Student Curricular/Co-Curricular Matters

1. Students encounter significant and consistent messaging related to critical approaches to global citizenship, from the application process through the program’s end.

2. Students encounter significant and consistent messaging related to critical approaches to cultural humility, from the application process through the program’s end.

3. Students are required to critically engage with issues related to cultural humility, commitment to human dignity, and critical global citizenship throughout the program’s curricular and/or co-curricular spaces.

4. Students engage with materials and resources created by members of the partner community and texts and/or other resources about the community.

5. Students thoughtfully examine their own intersectional identities and positionality.

6. Students engage in meaningful discourse or other forms of reflection to process their understanding of intersectional identities and positionality.

7. Students thoughtfully examine their own power and privilege.

8. Students engage in meaningful discourse or other forms of reflection to process their understanding of their own power and privilege.

9. Students thoughtfully examine their own cultural assumptions and existence as cultural beings.

10. Students engage in meaningful discourse or other forms of reflection to process their understanding of their own cultural assumptions and existence as cultural beings.

11. The types of critical self-reflection described in items e. – j. are intentional and ongoing throughout the partnership.

12. Students meaningfully examine broader global systems, structures, and contexts that inform and influence (positively or negatively) the community partnership.

13. There are multiple opportunities for students to reflect on how they will specifically bridge what they learned in the program into future behaviors and actions in their everyday lives.

Total raw score (sum of responses) = CEPI Section Score (total raw score/65) =%

3) Faculty and Staff Curricular/Co-Curricular Matters

1. Participating faculty and staff are required to critically engage with issues related to cultural humility, commitment to human dignity, and critical global citizenship throughout the program’s curricular and/or co-curricular spaces.

2. Participating faculty and staff engage with materials and resources created by members of the partner community and texts and/or other resources about the community.

3. Participating faculty and staff thoughtfully examine their own intersectional identities and positionality.

4. Participating faculty and staff engage in meaningful discourse or other forms of reflection to process their understanding of intersectional identities and positionality.

5. Participating faculty and staff thoughtfully examine their own power and privilege.

6. Participating faculty and staff engage in meaningful discourse or other forms of reflection to process their understanding of their own power and privilege.

7. Participating faculty and staff thoughtfully examine their own cultural assumptions and existence as cultural beings.

8. Participating faculty and staff engage in meaningful discourse or other forms of reflection to process their understanding of their own cultural assumptions and existence as cultural beings.

9. The types of critical self-reflection described in items e. – j. are intentional and ongoing throughout the partnership.

10. Participating faculty and staff meaningfully examine broader global systems, structures, and contexts that inform and influence (positively or negatively) the community partnership.

Total raw score (sum of responses) = CEPI Section Score (total raw score/50) =%

4) Pre-program Preparation for Students, Faculty, and Staff

1. Students, faculty, and staff have scaffolded opportunities to critically reflect on their own hopes, desires, motivations, and fears related to the community partnership, upcoming program participation, and desired outcomes.

2. Students, faculty, and staff engage in structured exercises to identify power imbalances that may exist within the partnership.

3. Students, faculty, and staff understand the challenges that result from power imbalances that may exist within the community partnership.

4. Students, faculty, and staff are provided access to affordable resources to learn about the partner community.

5. Students, faculty, and staff have opportunities to engage with the community partner in ways that build trust.

6. Students, faculty, staff, and the community partner(s) discuss desires, motivations, and fears associated with the partnership.

7. Students, faculty, and staff are provided multiple opportunities/scaffolded exercises to promote learning about and understanding of the community partner through an asset-based (rather than deficit) model.

8. Students, faculty, and staff have opportunities to engage in dialogue with members of the community before entering their physical spaces.

9. Students, faculty, and staff are asked to process their own thoughts, beliefs, and assumptions about the community partner.

10. Students, faculty, and staff are asked to recognize, state, and deconstruct their own thoughts, beliefs, and assumptions about the nature and extent of their relationship with the community partner.

11. Students, faculty, and staff are required to identify and formally explore potential ethical issues with the community partnership.

12. Students, faculty, staff, and the community partner collaboratively explore potential ethical issues, biases, and challenges related to the community partnership.

Total raw score (sum of responses) = CEPI Section Score (total raw score/60) =%

5) Post-program Activities for Students, Faculty, and Staff

1. Students, faculty, and staff have multiple/scaffolded opportunities to critically reflect on the community-engaged experience.

2. Students, faculty, and staff have multiple/scaffolded opportunities to critically reflect on how they have grown, been influenced by, or changed as a product/result of the community-engaged experience.

3. Students, faculty, and staff have multiple/scaffolded opportunities to safely, openly, and critically discuss issues related to personal, physical, or psychological discomfort or trauma during and/or following the community-engaged experience.

4. Students, faculty, staff, and the community partner discuss/debrief regarding any ethical issues, biases, and/or challenges that occurred during the community-engaged experience or partnership.

5. Program/institution is prepared to provide professional referrals for students, faculty, and staff dealing with physical or psychological harm or trauma following the community engaged experience.

6. Students, faculty, and staff have a formal mechanism to provide feedback regarding the program/partnership.

7. Students formally articulate their personal and academic development/outcomes associated with the community partnership.

8. Faculty and staff formally articulate their personal and professional development/outcomes associated with the community partnership.

Total raw score (sum of responses) = CEPI Section Score (total raw score/40) =%

6) Program Evaluation

1. Specific program evaluation plans are created and include all activities related to the partnership. When possible, the use of mixed methods (both quantitative and qualitative) in evaluation is encouraged.

2. Community partners have the opportunity to co-create or provide feedback on partnership evaluation plans (both quantitative and qualitative assessments).

3. Community partners have a formal mechanism to provide feedback regarding the program/partnership.

4. Whenever possible, publicly available assessment instruments are used, to facilitate comparisons across programs.

5. Evaluation plans equitably focus on the experiences and outcomes for all stakeholders.

6. Evaluation plans are constructed in ways that allow for public dissemination of outcomes through conference presentations and/or peer-reviewed scholarship.

7. Formal reports detailing evaluation outcomes are produced, disseminated to all stakeholders, and made publicly available upon request.

8. Using evaluation metrics, detailed action plans are co-created with the intention of further enhancing programmatic and partnership equity and excellence.

9. Program evaluation-based action plans for programmatic and partnership enhancement are both encouraged and expected.

10. There are mechanisms in place that hold the program publicly accountable for following through on evaluation-based action plans for programmatic and partnership enhancement.

Total raw score (sum of responses) = CEPI Section Score (total raw score/50) =%

7) Program Reciprocity

1. Program administrators focus attention on the long-term feasibility and sustainability of partnerships that center on the mutual interests of both the program and community members.

2. Program administrators and community partner(s) work to understand the assets, needs, hopes, and desires of all partnership stakeholders.

3. Community partners are offered the opportunity to learn about, and prepare to engage with, students, faculty, and staff in meaningful ways, prior to their work with the community.

4. Program administrators prioritize the avoidance of community harm over academic outcomes, even if this means significantly changing, limiting, or terminating the partnership.

5. Community members are offered the opportunity to participate in partnership programming at no cost (financial, resource, human capital) to them.

6. As is appropriate, all community partnerships are constructed in ways that align with, and support, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (https://sdgs.un.org/goals).

Total raw score (sum of responses) = CEPI Section Score (total raw score/30) =%

8) Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Considerations

1. A formalized DEI plan facilitates the institution/program’s ability to welcome and support faculty, staff, student, and community participants across a variety of identities.

2. Program/institution requires a meaningful and detailed DEI statement as part of the application materials submitted by faculty and staff to participate as student or project leaders/mentors.

3. Program/institution requires student participants to demonstrate a written commitment to DEI principles/best practices and/or create a personal DEI development plan before engaging with community members.

4. Prior to interacting with the community, all student, faculty, and staff participants are required to meaningfully engage with issues of social justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion that are germane to the community partnership.

5. Program/institution intentionally and strongly encourages faculty and staff participation in professional development opportunities related to DEI.

6. Formal DEI training is a central component of the student experience.

7. Program/institution tracks participation across a variety of expressed identities (gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, etc.) and uses this data to guide effective programmatic actions that contribute to inclusive curriculum, training, and reflection practices.

8. For all community partnerships, program/institution has policies in place to address potential challenges that may arise due to the diverse identities and experiences of student, faculty, staff, and community participants.

9. Program/institution makes the physical, cognitive, perceptual, and emotional demands of program participation clear, including DEI expectations, and works to provide both trainings and reasonable accommodations to prospective participants to maximize inclusion.

Total raw score (sum of responses) = CEPI Section Score (total raw score/45) =%

9) Partnership Safety and Security

1. The program ensures that the operations of all community partner organizations are in full compliance with international, national, and local laws.

2. Comprehensive safety and emergency response plans are constructed for all partnership locations.

3. The program consistently follows all emergency and risk mitigation policies put in place by both their institution and community partner organization.

4. All program locations are fully evaluated regarding potential physical and psychological safety concerns by both the program and community partner.

5. Specific mechanisms are put in place to provide the efficient and effective communication of safety concerns by participants and community partners.

6. The program ensures that all faculty and staff are properly trained, and have passed all necessary background checks, in order to provide effective leadership of the partnership.

7. The program ensures that students, faculty, and staff are appropriately insured against health/medical risk or harm while working with community partners.

8. The program protects vulnerable community populations from harm through the employment of appropriate safeguards and by providing relevant training for all participants.

9. The program intentionally avoids engaging in partnerships with orphanages or other residential facilities for minors.

10. The program intentionally avoids engaging in partnerships that incorporate any aspect of medical care that involves clinical practice or the sharing of private medical information by uncredentialed participants.

11. The program intentionally avoids engaging in partnerships that allow uncredentialed participants to work directly in care/educator roles with children in education and childcare settings.

12. The program works closely with community partners to ensure that all stakeholders are aware of any liability risks that might be associated with the partnership and can accept or refuse the assumption of these risks at any time.

13. Any research program related to the partnership is reviewed by the relevant institutional review board (IRB) and any local oversight bodies prior to the initiation of any research activities.

14. The program and community partners both have the agency to remove participants or staff and/or terminate the partnership if standards of safety, security, and personal conduct are not met.

Total raw score (sum of responses) = CEPI Section Score (total raw score/70) =%

NOTE: Sections 10, 11, 12 collectively deal with financial matters. If instrument scorers wish, they can combine the scores from these three sections to obtain a meta-score related to partnership financial practices.

10) Financial Transparency

1. All financial costs associated with participation are clearly articulated and understood by all stakeholders.

2. All partnership stakeholders are aware of the reasoning behind all program expenditures.

3. All decisions related to program expenditures are transparent to all stakeholders.

4. Annual financial disclosures and reports related to the partnership, for both the educational institution and community partner organization(s), are available to all stakeholders as is deemed appropriate.

5. All partnership stakeholders have access to complete information that outlines the financial components of their component of the partnership.

Total raw score (sum of responses) = CEPI Section Score (total raw score/25) =%

11) Financial Equity for Student Participants

1. All costs associated with programming are frequently scrutinized and evaluated, to maximize the efficient and effective use of available resources.

2. Cost structures for programming are intentionally designed in ways that maximize student access and inclusion.

3. Whenever possible, the institution/program employs innovative budgeting solutions that are designed to effectively offset student-borne costs, particularly for underserved and marginalized student populations.

4. Program budgets are constructed in a way that takes into consideration student opportunity costs related to participation (such as a loss of work opportunities).

5. The program works closely with institutional offices (Office of Advancement, etc.) to effectively fundraise to offset student-borne costs.

6. The program engages in meaningful attempts to build a program endowment that will serve to sustainably support student engagement over the long-term.

7. For experiences that involve significant student costs of participation, the program is intentional in designing low/no-cost alternatives that maximize student inclusion.

8. Whenever possible, the program works with students to identify times when community engagement experiences can best accommodate students’ academic and other external employment commitments.

Total raw score (sum of responses) = CEPI Section Score (total raw score/40) =%

12) Financial Issues Related to Ethical Community Partnerships

1. Programs are designed to avoid negative economic impacts in partner communities (such as economic dependency or loss of livelihood).

2. Positive economic impacts that result from partnerships are intentionally and equitably distributed across multiple community stakeholders.

3. All partnership stakeholders can openly and critically discuss the financial components of the partnership with all other stakeholders.

4. If also functioning as service providers for visiting groups (food, lodging, transportation, etc.), all community partners have a meaningful role in determining the forms and amounts of compensation required for their work.

5. If also functioning as service providers for visiting groups (food, lodging, transportation, etc.), all community partners are properly compensated for their work.

6. If also functioning as service providers for visiting groups (food, lodging, transportation, etc.), all community partners have a meaningful role in determining how economic benefit will be equitably distributed within the partner community.

7. Whenever possible, purchases by the program to support the partnership (such as food, transportation of students, the procurement of project materials, etc.) are made at locally owned businesses physically located within the partner community.

8. Whenever possible, all financial transactions made by the program to support the partnership (such as food, transportation of students, the procurement of project materials, etc.) are conducted with the principles of equity and fair-trade practices in mind.

9. For all partnerships, the benefit/harm ratio for the community is frequently assessed, in ways that convey and amplify community voices.

10. Prior to engaging with the community partner(s), participating faculty, staff, and students discuss and practice strategies related to having culturally appropriate conversations about financial matters with community partners.

Total raw score (sum of responses) = CEPI Section Score (total raw score/50) =%

13) Navigating Power and Privilege

1. Program administrators are intentional in identifying and deconstructing differentials in power and privilege that may exist between the program and community partners.

2. Partnership stakeholders openly discuss power and privilege differentials that may exist within the partnership and with community members.

3. Partnership stakeholders work collaboratively to identify and deconstruct differentials in power and privilege that may exist at different levels of the partnership and community engagement.

4. Prior to engaging with the community, student, faculty, and staff participants are required to meaningfully engage with issues related to power structures, social structures, and monetary/non-monetary privilege in their partnership work.

5. Partnership stakeholders work to ensure that both student/faculty/staff and community participants learn about and are mindful of cultural differences that they may encounter during the partnership.

Total raw score (sum of responses) = CEPI Section Score (total raw score/25) =%

14) Environmental Sustainability

1. Community partner organizations are thoroughly vetted to ensure that their operations consider, and make good faith attempts to meet, standards of environmental sustainability that are reasonable within the physical, socioeconomic, and political contexts of the partnership.

2. Partnerships include regular risk assessments and interdisciplinary and intersectional approaches to understand and enhance ongoing environmental sustainability efforts.

3. Partnership stakeholders collaborate to minimize the environmental impacts of the partnership and balance any negative environmental impacts that might exist with positive benefits to the community.

4. The logistical components of community partnerships (such as transportation) are intentionally co-designed to minimize environmental impact and the waste of resources.

5. Community organizations that utilize domesticated or wild animals in ways that could reasonably be considered unethical or inhumane are not considered for partnerships.

6. Third-party vendors chosen to support community partnerships (such as providers of meals, transportation, supplies, etc.) conduct their business in ways that reasonably minimize environmental impacts and promote sustainability, within the physical, socioeconomic, and political contexts of the partnership.

Total raw score (sum of responses) = CEPI Section Score (total raw score/30) =%

15) Public Relations/Advocacy of Program Value

1. Community members are offered the opportunity to participate in the production and dissemination of all products that describe and/or promote the partnership.

2. Recruitment materials for the program actively promote ethical community engagement and cultural humility.

3. Reports are co-created by partnership stakeholders whenever possible.

4. Reports produced by the program/institution that include, describe, or have the potential to impact the community partnerships avoid the misappropriation of community narratives.

5. Partnership stakeholders participate in the production and dissemination of all products that describe and/or promote the partnership.

6. Materials (such as written descriptions and photographs) depicting the partnership are vetted by partnership stakeholders to maintain an accurate representation of personal agency, uphold the dignity of community members, and exemplify a strengths-based (rather than a deficit) model of the community and the partnership.

7. Public relations materials (recruitment materials, reports, web sites, etc.) function to effectively provide timely and relevant education about the historical, social, political, economic, and/or environmental contexts that are foundational to the issue or issues being addressed by the partnership.

8. Photographs of student participants and community partners are never taken without explicit permission of the subject and are never used in a way that could be considered dishonest, misrepresentative, dehumanizing, or exploitative.

9. All participants receive training and guidance regarding the appropriate uses of photography and social media in relation to the partnership.

10. Whenever possible, all partnership/public relations materials use inclusive terms such as community engaged learning or community-based learning to describe program activities.

11. Clear communication strategies are developed and maintained with partnership stakeholders and with the institution’s senior administrative staff (such as Provost or President).

Total raw score (sum of responses) = CEPI Section Score (total raw score/55) =%

16) Integration with Broader Curricular/Co-curricular Efforts Across Campus

1. Institution/program actively seeks to create meaningful connections between community partnerships and work being done in other campus curricular or co-curricular programs.

2. Institution/program effectively coordinates with other campus entities to support active collaborations and avoid duplications of effort.

3. Institution/program effectively disseminates best practices and “lessons learned” across other campus curricular or co-curricular programs.

Total raw score (sum of responses) = CEPI Section Score (total raw score/15) =%

CEPI Overall Score (total sum of responses across all sections/735) =%

Appendix 2: The Community Engagement and Partnership Inventory Short Form (CEPI-SF)

The Overall Score for the CEPI-SF is calculated by summing the total value of responses across all items and dividing that figure by 235. Just like with the full-length CEPI, in cases where one or more items are not applicable (N/A) or a response was not given, the denominator must be adjusted accordingly before the Overall Score is calculated. Given the already brief and summative nature of the CEPI-SF, user-based deletion of additional questions is not recommended, unless the questions under consideration are truly irrelevant to the program being assessed.

1. All community partnerships are constructed around the concept of dual purposes—where student learning and community outcomes are always accorded equal importance.

2. Community partners are included as co-creators in all aspects of the partnership from conceptualization to completion.

3. The partnership is intentionally designed from the beginning using asset-based approaches that avoid harm and draw on community expertise as well as strengthen capacities in the local partner community.

4. There is a widely understood process in place for community partners to regularly evaluate, adjust, and re-articulate the goals, scope, and strategies for the partnership at any time, either on their own or in collaboration with the other members of the partnership.

5. Community partners have a role in deciding formats for dissemination of scholarship resulting from the partnership and are offered the opportunity to serve as co-authors/co-presenters for any presentation, report, or published scholarship resulting from the partnership.

6. Students, faculty, and staff encounter consistent messaging related to critical approaches to global citizenship, cultural humility, and human dignity, and are required to meaningfully engage with these concepts from the application process through the program’s end.

7. Students, faculty, and staff engage with materials and resources created by members of the partner community and texts and/or other resources about the community.

8. Students, faculty, and staff thoughtfully examine, critically engage with, and meaningfully reflect upon their own cultural assumptions, intersectional identities, positionality, privilege, and power.

9. Students, faculty, and staff meaningfully examine broader global systems, structures, and contexts that inform and influence (positively or negatively) the community partnership.

10. Students, faculty, and staff engage in structured exercises to both identify power imbalances that may exist within the partnership and understand the challenges that may result from such imbalances.

11. Students, faculty, and staff have opportunities to engage in dialogue with members of the community, in ways that build trust, before entering the community’s physical spaces.

12. Students, faculty, and staff are asked to recognize, state, and deconstruct their own thoughts, beliefs, and assumptions about the community partner and their expected relationship with the partner.

13. Students, faculty, staff, and the community partner collaboratively explore potential ethical issues, biases, and challenges related to the partnership.

14. Students, faculty, and staff have multiple/scaffolded opportunities to critically reflect on all aspects of the community-engaged experience.

15. Students, faculty, and staff have a formal mechanism to provide feedback regarding the program/partnership.

16. Specific program evaluation plans are created and include all activities related to the partnership.

17. Community partners have a formal mechanism to provide feedback regarding the program/partnership.

18. Evaluation plans equitably focus on the experiences and outcomes for all stakeholders.

19. There are mechanisms in place that hold the program publicly accountable for following through on evaluation-based action plans for programmatic and partnership enhancement.

20. Program administrators focus attention on the long-term feasibility and sustainability of partnerships that centers on the mutual interests of both the program and community members.

21. Community partners are offered the opportunity to learn about, and prepare to engage with, students, faculty, and staff in meaningful ways, prior to their work with the community.

22. Community members are offered the opportunity to participate in partnership programming at no cost (financial, resource, human capital) to them.

23. As is appropriate, all community partnerships are constructed in ways that align with, and support, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (https://sdgs.un.org/goals).

24. A formalized DEI plan facilitates the institution/program’s ability to welcome and support faculty, staff, student, and community participants across a variety of identities.

25. Prior to interacting with the community, all student, faculty, and staff participants are required to meaningfully engage with issues of social justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion that are germane to the community partnership.

26. For all community partnerships, program/institution has policies in place to address potential challenges that may arise due to the diverse identities and experiences of student, faculty, staff, and community participants.

27. Program/institution makes the physical, cognitive, perceptual, and emotional demands of program participation clear, including DEI expectations, and works to provide both trainings and reasonable accommodations to prospective participants to maximize inclusion.

28. The program ensures that the operations of all community partner organizations are in full compliance with international, national, and local laws.

29. Comprehensive safety and emergency response plans are constructed for all partnership locations.

30. All program locations are fully evaluated regarding potential physical and psychological safety concerns by both the program and community partner.

31. The program protects vulnerable community populations from harm through the employment of appropriate safeguards and by providing relevant training for all participants.

32. All partnership stakeholders have access to complete information regarding the financial components of the partnership.

33. Whenever possible, the institution/program employs innovative budgeting solutions that are designed to maximize student access and inclusion by effectively offsetting student-borne costs.

34. Programs are designed to avoid negative economic impacts in partner communities (such as economic dependency or loss of livelihood).

35. Positive economic impacts that result from partnerships are intentionally and equitably distributed across multiple community stakeholders.

36. All partnership stakeholders can openly and critically discuss the financial components of the partnership with all other stakeholders.

37. Whenever possible, purchases by the program to support the partnership (such as food, transportation of students, the procurement of project materials, etc.) are made at locally owned businesses physically located within the partner community and are conducted with the principles of equity and fair-trade practices in mind.

38. The financial/resource benefit/harm ratio of the partnership for the community is frequently assessed by all stakeholders, in ways that convey and amplify community voices.

39. Prior to engaging with the community partner(s), participating faculty, staff, and students discuss and practice strategies related to having culturally appropriate conversations about financial matters with community partners.

40. Partnership stakeholders openly discuss and work collaboratively to identify and deconstruct differentials in power and privilege that may exist at different levels of the partnership and community engagement.

41. Partnership stakeholders work to ensure that both student/faculty/staff and community participants learn about and are mindful of cultural differences that they may encounter during the partnership.

42. Partnerships include regular risk assessments and interdisciplinary and intersectional approaches to understand and enhance ongoing environmental sustainability efforts within the partnership.

43. The logistical components of community partnerships (such as transportation) are intentionally co-designed to minimize environmental impact and the waste of resources.

44. Third-party vendors chosen to support community partnerships (such as providers of meals, transportation, supplies, etc.) conduct their business in ways that reasonably minimize environmental impacts and promote sustainability, within the physical, socioeconomic, and political contexts of the partnership.

45. Community members are offered the opportunity to participate in the production and dissemination of all products that describe and/or promote the partnership.

46. Recruitment materials for the program actively promote ethical community engagement and cultural humility and avoid the misappropriation of community narratives.

47. Materials/web resources depicting the partnership are vetted by stakeholders to maintain an accurate representation of personal agency, uphold the dignity of community members, exemplify a strengths-based (rather than a deficit) model of the community and the partnership, and function to effectively provide timely and relevant education about the historical, social, political, economic, and/or environmental contexts that are foundational to the issue or issues being addressed by the partnership.

CEPI Overall Score (total sum of responses across all sections/235) =%