“Partnerships can’t just be about student experience,” says Davarian L. Baldwin, a leading voice on the intersections of race, higher education, and urban life. “Even well-meaning cleanup days or tutoring programs can feel patronizing if they ignore the broader needs of residents.”

Baldwin, a keynote speaker for the 25th annual Engagement Scholarship Consortium International Conference in Roanoke, has built his career examining how universities shape the communities around them — not only through teaching and research but also as employers, developers, and political actors. He is the Paul E. Raether Distinguished Professor of American Studies at Trinity College.

In his book “In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower: How Universities Are Plundering Our Cities,” Baldwin documents the ways higher education institutions have influenced — and at times harmed — their host communities. His message for ESC attendees: For engagement to be sustainable, it must rest on reciprocity, shared value, and honesty about the economic as well as educational footprint of universities.

“My talk won’t stop at critique. I’ll share solutions from my lab’s work — practical steps we’ve taken and attempted — to help chart a more transparent, equitable, and sustainable path forward for university-community engagement,” Baldwin said.

We asked him about his work, the challenges universities face in building authentic partnerships, and what it will take to foster more equitable, sustainable engagement with the communities they serve.

What are the key elements that make a university-community partnership truly meaningful and sustainable?

The foundation of any authentic partnership is reciprocity and a sense of shared value. Too often, universities presume greater importance because of their financial means, physical footprint, or educational mission. Yet, universities rely heavily on the profound value of the communities in which they sit — for research, for fieldwork, for grant writing.

Shared value means co-authorship with community groups, equitable distribution of grant funds, and real decision-making power for community partners — not just advisory roles. Tools like community-based IRBs can help by placing conditions on university access to community data or personnel.

Another challenge is the student-centered focus of many projects. When programs are primarily about student learning, even well-intentioned efforts like cleanup days or tutoring can feel patronizing if they don’t consider the broader needs of residents. Finally, we cannot separate educational impacts from economic ones. A university’s footprint, hiring practices, or low service-worker wages may undermine educational benefits. Engagement must take both realities into account.

In your experience, what are the biggest barriers universities face when trying to build authentic relationships with the communities they serve?

The greatest barrier is trust. Universities see frequent turnover in personnel, but residents have long memories. Communities remember not just the good but also the harm universities have done.

Another barrier is the opaque nature of how universities actually work — governance, funding, decision-making. Sometimes thiat opacity is convenient, allowing universities to avoid accountability. But it also creates mismatched expectations: communities think one thing is possible while universities may not even have the capacity for certain solutions. Transparency about both possibilities and limitations is essential to rebuild trust.

How can universities move beyond traditional outreach to foster two-way collaboration with local residents and organizations?

Universities must align their engagement efforts with the actual influence they wield. While they present themselves as educational institutions, they are also major landholders, employers, health care providers, policing agents, and political actors. Their economic and political impact cannot be ignored.

This means sharing resources that come from claims of social impact — grants, tax abatements, development projects, intellectual property rights. Engagement offices should not just soften the blow of these non-educational impacts but serve as the moral compass ensuring actions align with stated missions.

What role do faculty and staff play in advancing community engagement within higher education institutions?

Faculty and staff are often the ones doing the real justice-oriented work of engagement. Yet this work can be used to mask negative non-educational impacts of the university — real estate expansion, policing, or low-wage labor practices.

Because of this, faculty and staff must have more than an advisory role. Their mission-driven work and values should inform decisions made by boards of trustees, real estate offices, technology transfer divisions, development foundations, and human resources. At one point, universities granted their faculty governance over curriculum and student life. However today, it’s the non-educational divisions that dominate a university’s social impact. We need faculty and staff voices to guide the full range of university activities and make sure that all of the work is governed by the university mission in ways that are more substantive than symbolic.

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