Building Resilient Education Models Post Crisis

Author : Sherrie Hixon
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (137 download)

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Download or read book Resilience and Higher Education written by Sherrie Hixon and published by . This book was released on 2022 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In March 2020, universities quickly closed their campuses and shifted to remote delivery options to continue education and administrative services in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. This closure severely impacted research and service-learning projects taking place in the community as all in-person interactions ceased. The ensuing chaos required people on- and off-campus to reorganize programs and processes in order to continue their work. The purpose of this research was to understand how partnerships between public, urban-serving universities and the community agencies with whom they are engaged in research and service-learning projects build capacity for resilience in the communities they serve during an acute shock; that shock being the global disease outbreak of COVID-19. Three theoretical frameworks were applied to this research study: Chaos, resilience, and university-community partnerships. Chaos theory provides the context for the pandemic and frames the urgency for systems to respond and adapt. Resilience is focused on a system's ability to adapt to chronic stressors in society, such as food and housing insecurity, unemployment, health disparities, and economic inequality, and to acute shocks, which are catastrophic events like earthquakes, wildfires, and disease outbreaks. University-community partnerships provides context for understanding the value of research and service-learning programs that engage faculty and students in civic-minded work with government, non-governmental organizations, and nonprofit agencies in the community. The faculty who serve as directors of campus centers are often at the forefront of this work. This multiple case study was set at a large, pubic university in Los Angeles County, California. Each case was comprised of an academic campus center and at least one community partner with whom the centers engage in research and/or service-learning projects. As a qualitative study, data collection included semi-structured interviews, document analysis, and researcher memos. A total of 13 interviews were conducted over four case studies, including five directors/co-directors of four campus centers and leaders of eight nonprofit agencies. The overarching goals of this study were to understand how the campus centers and their partners endured the crisis and to explore the challenges they experienced in adapting programs and services. The major findings of this study indicate that these partnerships were key to the collective ability to adapt programs; that their networks helped them navigate the complexities of the pandemic; that directors faced significant administrative challenges; that hybrid models developed in response to the crisis will persist; and, that directors are adopting resilience theory into their strategic planning. After more than two years of turmoil and upheaval, it appears that many of the transformations these organizations made to respond to the pandemic will continue in the future because they helped the organizations and community become more resilient.