Janine M. Jurkowski is a professor in social, behavior and community health in the School of Public Health at the University at Albany. Dr. Jurkowski also formerly served as the University's Provost's Fellow for Publicly Engaged Research and Teaching. In this episode of The Engagement Ring, Dr. Jurkowski shares her insights and experience as a publicly engaged scholar, researcher and teacher and discusses the Engaged Scholars Tooklit she created to provide University at Albany faculty with a set of strategies for planning and documenting publicly engaged scholarship for dossiers for promotion and tenure.
Dr. Janine Jurkowski: https://www.albany.edu/sph/faculty/janine-m-jurkowski
Engaged Scholars Toolkit: https://livealbany.sharepoint.com/:w:/s/web_public-engagement/ETrRwjijXk5CuEHp0jA-0ZQB6NAU_X-yi714Fe2oaCVf2g?e=j0KXR7
Campus Compact: https://compact.org/
Campus Compact Resources for Engaged Scholars: https://compact.org/resources
UAlbany Office for Public Engagement: albany.edu/public-engagement
The Engagement Ring, Episode 14: The Engaged Scholars Toolkit – A Conversation with Dr. Janine Jurkowski
[Lively, upbeat theme music plays as program host Mary Hunt introduces the program and plays excerpts from her interview with Dr. Janine Jurkowski.]
ANNOUNCER/MARY HUNT: Welcome to the Engagement Ring, your connection to an ever widening network of higher education professionals, scholars, and community partners, working to make the world a better place. I'm Mary Hunt. Today on the podcast…
DR. JANINE JURKOWSKI: It's about equitably involving partners outside academic institutions in the research process or in teaching.
ANNOUNCER/MARY HUNT: Dr. Janine Jurkowski, a professor of social behavior and community health in the School of Public Health at the University at Albany, and former provost's fellow for publicly engaged research and teaching at UAlbany, discusses the toolkit she's created to help scholars more effectively plan and document their community engaged work.
DR. JANINE JURKOWSKI: The struggle often is that researchers fear that it will interfere with them getting tenure; it'll interfere with them doing the research they need to do to publish. But it can be done, it has been done, you know, internationally, nationally. I do it. It's just, it's just that people need to learn how to do it in a way that they can do both academic research rigor, or teaching rigor and do community engagement and do it well.
ANNOUNCER/MARY HUNT: Here's my conversation with Dr. Jurkowski.
[Program introduction ends, and interview begins]
MARY HUNT: Janine, welcome to the podcast.
DR. JANINE JURKOWSKI: Thank you.
MARY HUNT: Pleasure to have you. We've been looking forward to having this conversation for a long time. So, welcome. Sometimes here at UAlbany and sometimes at other institutions and organizations, you'll hear the terms public engagement and community engagement used interchangeably or sometimes people question what's the difference. I know our institution tends to use them interchangeably. You can make the argument that they could be, but they also could have a distinction. I'm just curious, do you draw a distinction between the two? Or if someone were to ask would you describe the difference between the two in any particular way?
DR. JANINE JURKOWSKI: I think there's a slight difference only based on perception. And that is that public engagement is a broader term to be more inclusive of maybe government organizations or private, public-private partnerships that aren't necessarily not for profit, but maybe they're for profit. Communities tend to refer to the idea of working with community representatives, residents, as well as nonprofits that serves a community. They may represent neighborhoods, cities, regions. So there's a little bit more of a geographic tone to community, but not… it doesn't mean that that's automatically what is. So I just think that public is a little more expansive.
MARY HUNT: I've heard that. I've also heard people say overseas too, they refer to it differently. Sometimes you're more apt to hear public. It's just an interesting conversation to have. And sometimes that's something people ask, you know, ask me about. How would you define public or community engagement for fellow scholars, who may be looking to for, you know, more of an idea of what it entails?
DR. JANINE JURKOWSKI: From the perspective of an academic researcher, it's about equitably involving partners outside academic institutions in the research process or in teaching. So, it's different than service and I think that's a key thing for people to understand… is that if someone who's doing volunteerism, or service in a community, you know, you can be community engaged. But when it comes to community or public engaged scholarship, the emphasis is more on the academic research and teaching side and doing it equitably. Where, you know, researcher may traditionally be the person in the power role because of the research funding or because they're the ones that have a resource that somebody in a community may need. But in the context of a community engaged or publicly engaged partnership, then it's more equitable, and there's mutually beneficial work going on. So it's not just benefiting the researcher or the professor for the students, but it's also benefiting the community or public partner.
MARY HUNT: What could be an example of that mutual benefit? What way could the community benefit? We can see a scholar might be gaining access to research, funding, things like that, but I guess on both sides, what might be examples of the way they would benefit?
DR. JANINE JURKOWSKI: Yeah, I can start with a teaching example. A teaching example is where a professor may have a class like in program evaluation, or community assessment or you know, something with business plans, and they may partner with an organization or multiple organizations where the work being done by the students… the students are being trained to do something that will be applicable in their jobs in the future. But the organization is receiving the benefit of that practice. Because it's a real-world experience that they're working with the partner or the organization. And, and they're communicating, it's reciprocal, it’s interactive and there's a product or something that is a benefit to the organization, as well as the student who gets the benefit of their grade. They have a project that they get done. And it's a real life experience project. So it's more real to what they're going to experience in the world. So that's where it's mutually beneficial.
MARY HUNT: What about the community? What do they stand to gain?
DR. JANINE JURKOWSKI: They gain like a product that might be of interest. So, I've had my own personal experience of the program evaluation class this past semester, we had organizations who had funding for projects, for doing programs and implementation of different programs or a policy thing, and students applied the methods and strategies they learned in class to design a program evaluation for those organizations that didn't have the time or person power to do that. They were going to just put together something. But instead, they had a fully designed program evaluation framework and an actual outcomes and measures and everything they needed to then if they wanted to take that and apply it for the program or policy they could. And so we there was direct benefit to the organizations because they had something that they can take and use.
MARY HUNT: As long as I have known you, or I've been in this role. You've been our go-to person for public engagement when we have questions, or we need advice, or we want guidance. I know a lot of faculty look to you too as a mentor. As a matter of fact, you were the first provost’s fellow for publicly engaged research and teaching here at the university. I know you've been… you have a long commitment and a long history in working in this area. Can you talk a little bit about where you got your start working community engagement and why it was important to you to begin with?
DR. JANINE JURKOWSKI: Sure, that's, that's a long time ago (Dr. Jurkowski chuckles.) I started when I was in my master's program, and then was working in community engagement traffic safety, and realized, well, I want to do this with research. And so I went to Chicago for my PhD. It was in the division of community health sciences, and I was trained specifically to do community based participatory research and community organizing on top of a lot of research methods. And I worked there in intervention research in a prevention research c[enter, and everything was participatory and community engaged -- are all my experiences. And my dissertation was based off that. I did that for a postdoc. I've been involved in various communities since probably like 1997, from Chicago to Boston, Amsterdam, New York, to Albany, Rensselaer, Boston again, and I have, you know, for the past 10 years have had an intervention research project to prevent childhood obesity, where I was the participatory research expert. And it was in Rensselaer County where we did community based participatory work with low income parents as co-researchers. And then in Boston it was expanded to include parents as co-researchers, but also Head Start staff and administrators so that they could institutionalize something more broadly in the larger Head Start programs. And it was all around childhood obesity prevention. And it was intervention research, you know, it was a clinical trial --clinical trial in the sense that it was designed as a randomized control trial, so the gold standard in research, but it was all participatory. And so I've worked on everything from smaller projects to larger projects doing participatory work, and also participatory program evaluation, and I do it in my teaching as much as I can as well. And then of course, there's service component I do in service to the university, but also in the community. So it kind of encompasses all of my three levels of scholarship.
MARY HUNT: And it's hard work. It takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of planning a lot of relationship building. What is it that you… I guess find so rewarding that you've made such a commitment to it?
DR. JANINE JURKOWSKI: I, I strongly believe if you want to address health equity it has to involve community engagement because of the power differentials and the lack of power among marginalized communities. And so I… it is, it’s time consuming since you have to build relationships and be genuine and true to who you are. And that means sometimes trying to balance the academic research really honestly and transparently with the community needs and it takes time. It takes building trust. But it's it just, I don't know, it’s just something I'm passionate about. And I think that the struggle often is that researchers fear that it will interfere with them getting tenure. It'll interfere with them doing the research they need to do to publish. But it can be done. It has been done internationally, nationally. I do it. It's just that people need to learn how to do it in a way that they can do both academic research rigor, or teaching rigor and do community engagement and, and do it well.
MARY HUNT: Would you say there's, I don't want to say a trend, because that sounds trivial, but more and more faculty, more and more academics are beginning to get more involved with community in their research for a lot of reasons, because that seems to be what funders expect, what funders require, we want to see real results from the research that's being done, and we want to see connections to real life and the research connected with making a difference in people's lives and yeah, I'm addressing real problems? It just seems more and more academics seem to be getting involved in it.
DR. JANINE JURKOWSKI: The more superficial level, yes, we blame it on our funders. They are requiring it more, but they're requiring it more because they're seeing that decades and decades of research have very little impact on actual real life in society. And so you know, you have taxpayers paying millions and billions of dollars in research for like the National Institutes of Health, and you have non-profita or foundations that are putting out money. And they want to see a return on their investment. And so you have everything from politicians saying what is this research doing to taxpayers saying, well, what is this research doing? So you… there really… and also our data, our statistics are showing what is this research not doing? We have a lot of evidence out there that things are not improving as quickly as we had hoped, given all the research and knowledge we have. And so there's a lot of evidence to say that when you engage those who are impacted by the research, or those who are being researched in the research process, you're going to do a better job figuring out how to solve the health issues or other issues of the day because they know what are their barriers; they know what's going on, they know what needs to be changed. Instead of us sitting in our offices and making decisions and pulling our theories out, we can apply our theories and apply or methods with real world contexts, and then should be more effective. And there is evidence that it is more effective. It just needs to be on a broader scale.
MARY HUNT: And you've created something called the Engaged Scholars Toolkit, tell me what that is, and who did you create that for?
DR. JANINE JURKOWSKI: So that's created for faculty, researchers and doctoral students, I think would benefit from it or anyone interested in research. It's the idea of people really don't get trained in a PhD program, or a DrPh program or any other type. They don't often get trained in community health and or community sciences or engagement. There's a lot written on it. There's a long history of it, but it's not something people often receive training in. They receive excellent training in rigorous methods. Now it's learning how they can take that and put that into their work and be successful for tenure and promotion, because I've heard over the years, that is a big fear is that people are not… researchers are worried they won't get promoted. They worry that it'll put them at risk for losing their job, and not having the national or international reputations. And so they… this toolkit is to help them navigate that while doing their excellent work. They can do both -- do excellent research, get tenure, get promoted and do it in a community engaged way and authentic community engaged way. And some of that is just knowing how to brand or market yourself, to be honest, and also planning ahead and thinking over the long term for tenure and promotion, not just going and doing but how are you doing this in a way that can lead to the publications, the grants, whatever is needed for that.
MARY HUNT: I want to go into some of the things that you cover in the toolkit, but you mentioned public health and public health is certainly, probably one of the fields that most people associate community engaged research with, but community engaged research really transcends disciplines, doesn't it? Here at UAlbany, there are nine schools and colleges and each one seems to have their own area of community engagement and level of involvement.
DR. JANINE JURKOWSKI: I mean, engineering has excellent engagement going on where it's benefiting… I've talked to faculty about things like police departments to atmospheric sciences, you know, psychology. You know, there's a strong history in psychology of community engagement and community psychology. There's an incredibly excellent journal in the Journal of Community Psychology. So that's been around for a while. So it's not just public health or social welfare or any of the, the, I guess you'd say, the professional schools. It's across the board. From engineering, I've, you know, I've heard about people doing that when in like imaging sciences, and you name it, whatever field it can, if there's some way to have a societal benefit, it can be community engaged. I mean public administration is another one off the top of my head, criminal justice, all of those.
MARY HUNT: In the toolkit, you talk about scholarship, and you talk about what makes an activity or product scholarship. Can you explain that?
DR. JANINE JURKOWSKI: So, you know, the idea of scholarship is that you're moving the field forward, that you're contributing and filling a gap in your field of research. And so understanding that community engagement is a science is well, you know, it's a strategy. It's an approach that can be applied to science. So I guess, itself it is a science that people study, but it's also strategies that can be applied to any research. So you can write about that. I think there needs to be more written in other fields outside of public health or social work, or community psychology, where people are talking about their scholarship, and how its community engaged and how it contributes. So there's ways to write about it. But it also is incorporating into the research that's going on. So a publication that is, you know, where it is something that is engaged, including that in the write up in the new manuscript, in the, in the conference presentation, talk about how your research was influenced by community engagement, and what you did for community engagement because that also helps other people learn and move the field forward. So it's really about incorporating it into our traditional forms of scholarship. And it certainly can be there. But also, there's areas where, you know, maybe more public scholarship where you could include it in, you know, social media or in anything that's open access. So having that a part of that as well. And I think universities are recognizing the value of that, those mechanisms for it national and international reputation.
MARY HUNT: You've got a great chart in the toolkit that compares traditional scholarship and engaged scholarship. So that's something that's really worthwhile to look at. Do you think the two kinds of scholarship, traditional and engaged, require different skill sets or different mindsets?
DR. JANINE JURKOWSKI: Definitely a different mindset. And yes, I think somewhat of a different skill set. A different mindset because if you are going into a community saying I know what's best for you, nowadays, especially the door is going to shut in your face, whether it's at an organization, or an agency, or in a neighborhood, people don't want to be told. You have expertise that you're willing to share, and you want to learn from them. So it's a different mindset to think of a community partner as an equal. And I think we've often been raised in academics to think we're superior, and we're not. We just have a very narrow, unique expertise that can really make a difference. But it can make a difference only if we apply it and work collaboratively with those who are on the ground doing the work.
MARY HUNT: What types of challenges does an academic, a researcher face, a doctoral student in conducting research in the community, or in working with community partners, that they might not face in a traditional situation?
DR. JANINE JURKOWSKI: They might be challenged. They might be saying that, you know, that method doesn't work for us, or you know, that measure may be fine but that doesn't really capture everything, you need to think about additional measures for your research question.
MARY HUNT: So by the partner. The community may be pushing back a little bit, you’re saying?
DR. JANINE JURKOWSKI: Yes, the community itself, but that's okay. And that's how you get more innovative and coming up with more innovative measures, or innovative research questions. You might have different, you know, research questions may emerge. And that can be challenging but you have to be willing to be open minded about it. But it's also challenging sometimes if your colleagues don't think of it as real research because you're engaged with communities. I've heard things like people saying like, “Oh, it's a conflict.” Well, no, it's actually a conflict if we don't engage community members because we are talking about them and potentially impacting people or organizations or a field and we're not hearing from those who are impacted by those results.
MARY HUNT: At a public research university that bar’s even higher, I mean, you feel the obligation to be more community engaged or to definitely be community engaged. Wouldn’t you say. You have that charge of representing the public.
DR. JANINE JURKOWSKI: Yeah, if you're representing the public, and you're supported by public dollars, well what are you doing for the public good? Yes, I think so. Although I would argue that private institutions really receive a lot of public dollars as well. And how are we improving society with all of this funding? And so, yeah, that can be… I see it in both sides. I also think the challenge is, though, people struggle with it, because they really do fear how it's going to impact their trajectory. And that's where the toolkit can helps them do a better job at tracking their engagement, tracking their scholarship in a way and promoting their scholarship in a way that includes engaged work. And it can be done, it can be done well, and documenting it and not being afraid to include it in the dossier for tenure or promotion.
MARY HUNT: You refer to the language of publicly engaged scholarship. What do you mean by that? Can you share some examples of words that kind of fall into that language?
DR. JANINE JURKOWSKI: Well, so the language of publicly engaged scholarship is usually around reciprocity, mutually beneficial, impact or influence on external forces, like a community or neighborhood or an organization. So when talking about impact of scholarship, we often just talk about impact on the research field. But there's the broader impact on society at some level. And that's, that's a little different than traditional scholarship. And that's where you hear the demand for that increasing, broadly speaking in this country and nationally.
MARY HUNT: How about when you try to translate the value of that scholarship and relate it in your dossier? What kind of language comes into play there?
DR. JANINE JURKOWSKI: I mean, there's the language… honestly, it's what I've seen being on CPCA. you know, at the university level, even at the School of Public Health…
MARY HUNT: What is CPCA?
DR. JANINE JURKOWSKI: It’s the committee for promotion and academic… (trails off). I don't remember (both Janine and Mary laugh together)…
MARY HUNT: It’s the committee on tenure and promotion.
DR. JANINE JURKOWSKI: Yes, it reviews tenure and promotion at the university level. And I've reviewed packages, dossiers from across the university. And it's really about having it in there at all. And those who do have it in there, they show how it's linked to, you know, you have a statement, and how you describe in your statement your collaborative work, and how it's collaborative and mutually beneficial, and it has an impact outside of your scholarship, and then also how it impacts your scholarship, impacts the field, and then making sure that it's consistently included in your CV. And, you know, it's just the idea that you're describing it not as service, because I think that's one of the risks that people often see traditionally, that research that's collaborative is service, and it's not. It is scholarship -- teaching, as well, you know. Collaborating for teaching is teaching, It 's, you know, including it in the right place, making sure it's documented, and that you show the products like the manuscripts, the conference presentations, and then also describing the impact on the community. I would just say I know that being on the committee that other faculty too recognize that. They read it and they pick up on it, and they're aware of it, and they're quite comfortable. I've been seeing comfortable with reviewing packages that talk about community engagement.
MARY HUNT: Typically, at a university scholarly research is subject to approval by an institutional review board. Does the IRB look at community engaged research differently? Or is there a different kind of scrutiny for that kind of research?
DR. JANINE JURKOWSKI: So I think that's the challenge. Those are the challenges that people face. Institutional Review Boards, it really depends on who's on the board. And now some institutions have training for their review boards, too, so that they understand engaged scholarship. And so it might be that faculty would need to educate and maybe cite scholarship and sources to show that this is legitimate research. At the same time, you know, I think since it's growing in recognition and value across funders and everywhere else, institutional review boards are probably going to be more open to it. The issue can be for faculty is that with the engaged research, you may not have everything defined to the letter upfront. And so you might have to go in for more amendments and back to the Institutional Review Board to amend your protocol so that the review boards are aware of changes that may occur along the way, like adding an additional measure, because, you know, the community representatives requested that or something.
MARY HUNT: And you're dealing with a lot of people's lives, and you're dealing with various communities too. I mean there are always ethics associated with your research, but you really, I would think, have to be mindful and careful and ethical about the relationships and the promises and the interactions that you make with the community.
DR. JANINE JURKOWSKI: Yes, community ethics can be different than research ethics. So what an institutional review board cares about is liability, protecting the institution, and protecting research subjects in a very specific way. Community ethics is about respecting the community, respecting the autonomy of a community or your organization that you're working with and involves often transparency and so on. It can be different but it's really about communication. I mean, one of the things with community engagement, at every angle, it's about communication, and respectful communication, whether it's with an institutional review board, or community, or your funder, it's about communicating and articulating what you're doing, which only helps improve your work anyway, if you can articulate that. So yeah, I think one of the big skill sets is communication and open communication.
MARY HUNT: Your toolkit obviously is a key resource for faculty who want to become more or improve their community engaged skills. Are there other resources, I know you mentioned a few in the toolkit that doctoral students, teachers, faculty who want to become more engaged, can look to for support, whether it's mentoring or… any specific… (questions trails off)
DR. JANINE JURKOWSKI: That is one recommendation for somebody who is going through the tenure process is to find a mentor. So they might have a mentor in their field of engineering, but they may also they're interested in community engagement, would find a mentor who's also community engaged scholarship may be adding to your mentorship and having somebody who's senior who can help you come up with oh, maybe you should consider submitting to this journal versus that journal and talk about engagement here, or maybe you should apply for funding over here because they are likely to fund this. So it's everything from oh, here's how you can frame it, or here's, maybe you could write an article that really talks about the relationship with community engagement in your field. And so there's somebody who can… a mentor who can guide you because there's a lot of scholarship, not just the research scholarship, but there's also you know, how you can do scholarship to advance the field of engagement in your field.
MARY HUNT: I would imagine to there might be folks who can introduce you to people in the community that could be partners in that relationship in itself. It has great value toward building trust.
DR. JANINE JURKOWSKI: Yes, the reputation of the university, the reputation of your colleagues… they can help you build your relationships.
MARY HUNT: You also mentioned communities of practice. So scholars, I guess, getting involved with others outside of their own institutions too to further their skill sets.
DR. JANINE JURKOWSKI: Yeah, there's different organizations and associations in different academic fields may have special interest groups around engagement, or diversity and equity and inclusion that may also include engagement. So there's different ways to get involved and connect with people in the field… in your field who does engaged scholarship and certainly through professional organizations. There are definitely avenues and a growing number of avenues in that. There's also larger you know, globally there's a collaborative that I've seen that is around community engaged scholarship. Sometimes it's just going out and seeing what's going on in your field and exploring. I can't speak to all the other fields. I know public health has a lot of infrastructure supporting community engaged scholarship over the years within our professional association and other associations. But I can see growing in fields that that I’m affiliated with but not directly involved in but there are definitely special interest groups in those areas.
MARY HUNT: Campus Compact has a good knowledge hub where scholars and practitioners can you know, pick up some good ideas.
DR. JANINE JURKOWSKI: Yes, Campus Compact is an excellent source, for sure.
MARY HUNT: What’s your best advice to someone who is either in the field trying to get better at what they do in the field or wants to learn more? What would you tell them?
DR. JANINE JURKOWSKI: I would say connect with a colleague at the university. There are a lot of people in various fields around the university who are doing community engaged scholarship, and connecting with them or connecting with others in your own field that may be at other universities doing the work and just talking with them about it, reading some of their articles, or attending their conference presentations in that way you can learn more about how they're doing it, what they're doing. But definitely connecting with colleagues is an important one and talking to your own department about it. So even as you're doing it and developing your own scholarship in that area, making sure your department chair or your dean is aware you're doing this work and talk about how this is going… talk to them about how this is scholarship. Talk to them about how your work is having impact in the field as well as in community or society. So it's important to connect with people for this work, I think… (Janine laughs)…
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DR. JANINE JURKOWSKI: …you know, in your own field and in the university because it just helps to get… even sharing ideas, commiserating, strategies… if an IRB does pose a challenge coming up with strategies for how to address the challenges. You know, that kind of thing.
MARY HUNT: Really good advice. Thanks for your leadership at UAlbany in public engagement, and thanks for being my guest today, Janine.
DR. JANINE JURKOWSKI: Thank you very much. It's a pleasure.
ANNOUNCER/MARY HUNT: Dr. Janine Jurkowski is a professor of social behavior and community health in the School of Public Health at the University at Albany. She tweets at Jurkowski Janine. Dr. Jurkowski’s engaged scholars toolkit is available online at UAlbany's public engagement website at Albany dot edu slash public hyphen engagement. You can also find a direct link to the toolkit, along with a number of other useful links, on the resource page for this podcast. The Engagement Ring is produced by the University at Albany's Office for Public Engagement. If you have questions or comments or want to share an idea for an upcoming podcast, email us at UAlbany O P E at Albany dot E D U.
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