Researchers
Research faculty, students, and staff play an important role in advancing KU’s institutional commitment to community engagement. Through meaningful partnerships with communities, researchers advance knowledge and inquiry grounded in a broad range of lived experiences and community priorities. KU researchers are encouraged to participate in community-engaged research, to utilize ethical and respectful research methods and to facilitate research findings that span all disciplines that address issues, that matter to communities, both locally and globally. Faculty, students, and staff can use this toolkit to support community engaged research across issues and disciplines.
How do I get started?
- Explore the Engaged KU Toolkit for resources on how to engage the community throughout all stages of research.
- Build and maintain relationships with community partners grounded in trust, respect, and shared benefit.
- Ensure compliance with human subjects research protections at KU for students, faculty and staff who conduct research and the communities they engage and support. Complete the community-engaged research modules through the Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative (CITI).
- Identify community priorities that align with your research background and partner to co-develop research questions and a shared research agenda.
- Integrate students into community-based research projects to support applied learning.
- Align research design, data collection, and dissemination strategies with community needs and expectations under mutually beneficial agreements.
- Use community-friendly language that are clearly understandable to non-academic audiences when discussing research.
- Provide opportunities for community partners to be involved in all phases of the research, including in dissemination with both scholarly and community audiences.
- Provide agreed upon outputs and products from the research that have value and utility to the community partner. Ensure scholarly products are shared with community partners and there are opportunities for feedback.
- Document community engagement activities in the Engaged KU Community Check Box, a shared documentation system, and receive an annual acknowledgement letter from the Office of Community Impact for your teaching and research files.
Standards & Guidelines
- Community-Engaged Research (CER): Follow institutional policies related to community-engaged research (e.g., IRB, MOUs, KUCR). Use ethical, community‑based, and co‑created research practices aligned with institutional standards. Ensure IRB and data-sharing practices appropriate to CE. Examine and share with partners risk assessment, privacy, secure storage and other considerations for ethical collection and use of information with community partners.
- Mutual Benefit & Dissemination: Engage in reciprocal partnerships with shared goals, responsibilities, and benefits. Provide resources and support to community members and partners to remove barriers and enhance opportunities to support community engagement (e.g., transportation/parking, scheduling beyond academic calendars, accessibility, digital access, remote participation, scheduling outside academic hours, translation/interpretation, childcare, safety, compensation). Participate in co‑creation of programs, research, and learning experiences. Provide results, outputs, and products in usable community-friendly formats that are of value to the community. Document policy/practice impacts. Facilitate plan for returning results in usable formats (briefs, forums, data visualizations). Select agreed upon repositories with partners for data sharing (disciplinary or KU ScholarWorks) when appropriate.
- Full Participation & Representation: Ensure partner voice in decision-making and occasion opportunities for regular feedback. Facilitate opportunities for community and stakeholder participation. Support balanced partnerships, including community compensation, shared decision-making, and co‑creation. Provide resource partner compensation for their community expertise and access to opportunities that are meaningful to the community partner(s). Budget for partner compensation.
- Assessment and Reporting: Maintain engagement data systems, documentation, agreements, and compliance processes. Collect partner satisfaction and quality improvement information. Track research partnerships and outcomes in institutional systems (e.g., Engaged KU Community Check Box, IRB, Faculty Insight).
- Recognition and Rewards: Ensure research projects recognize community expertise and include shared decision-making. Provide opportunities for agreed upon authorship/credit. Disseminate findings in meaningful ways to both scholarly and community audiences.
Researcher Resources
- Experts at KU - Online faculty expertise search portal to find research collaborators on the Lawrence and KU Medical Center campuses.
- KU Community Engagement Networks, Groups, and Coalitions - Connect with community engagement networks, groups, and coalitions supported between campus and community partners.
- KU Office of Research — Community Engagement - Connect with research centers and institutes supporting community-engaged research.
- Human Subjects Training - The Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative (CITI) provides all KU researchers and associates with a human subjects research tutorial. Must be completed every 3 years.
- CIRTification - Community Involvement in Research Training is a human research protections training program designed especially for community partners.
- KU Office of Research: Broader Impacts at KU - Determine how your research contributes to broader community and societal impacts.
- Community-Engaged Research Continuum - Explore the full spectrum of community-engaged research approaches supported at KU.
- Center for Undergraduate Research - Find research mentors, apply for funding, and present work at symposiums across all fields.
- Office of Graduate Studies - Learn about preferred practices for incorporating graduate students in your research and identify mentorship agreements.
- Office of Community Impact Trainings - Participate in trainings on responsible community-engaged scholarship.
- Engaged KU Community Check Box - Use the strategic dashboard to document community-engaged research efforts and receive acknowledgment of your research efforts from OCI.
- Kansas Informal Learning Network Event Calendar - Find informal learning opportunities and community engagement events supported by campus partners.
- KU Community Impact Summit - Showcase your community-engaged research at this annual gathering of campus and community partners.
- KU Office of Research: IRB Submissions - Submit and manage Institutional Review Board applications for human subjects research.
- KU Office of Research: Responsible Conduct of Research - Access training and resources for ethical research practices.
- KU Libraries: Share Your Data - Find tools and support for sharing and preserving research data.
- Refer to the Carnegie Community Engagement Framework Guidance Document when planning, implementing, and assessing community engagement across departments and units.
Examples
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