Developing Sustainable Community Partnerships. Lessons Learned from the University of Georgia’s Archway Partnership

Abstract

This article describes the University of Georgia’s Archway Partnership—one of the university’s com­munity outreach efforts based on its land grant mis­sion—and the process that it uses to develop and sustain a community partnership. In particular, the article focuses on Archway’s use of a neutral, pro­fessional facilitator as a means of creating and sus­taining the characteristics associated with success­ful, sustained university/ community partnerships, particularly cooperative goal setting, shared power, group cohesion, and partnership management. Us­ing administrative data on the Archway Partnership and qualitative survey data from Archway faculty, the article highlights critical success factors asso­ciated with the Archway Partnership’s relationship building, thus helping to unpack the black box of how to develop a successful university/ community partnership.