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As at many institutions, some faculty at the University of Wisconsin--Eau Claire (UWEC) are partnering with community agencies to perform research to meet those agencies' data needs. Such community-based research can be an important component of an institution's civic engagement effort. Commentators such as Randy Stoecker and Harry Boyte have noted, however, that academics can function as technocrats when their epistemic power perpetuates oppressive power structures; they call for deliberate attention to establishing partnership conditions that empower equitable collaboration in determining research goals and methods and analyzing data, equitable ownership and access to those data, and reciprocal benefit to both academic and community partners. In this presentation, we'll 1) share a "research justice" model we have devised intended to be used to evaluate the justice orientation of community-based research partnerships at our institution and 2) communicate the results of our effort to use this model to rate a pilot set of community-based research projects at UWEC. Attendees of this mini session will be asked to comment upon and potentially help refine the justice research model we have devised and invited to use it to evaluate their own civically engaged research and to spark discussions regarding the justice orientation of community-based research at their institutions.
