Tufts University
EN-10: Community Partnerships

Tufts University and the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative (DSNI) formed an innovative, 3-year community-based collaboration for joint learning, research and action called the Co-Research/Co-Education (CORE) program. The agreement is built on almost three decades of collaboration between the Tufts University Department of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning (UEP) and DSNI. Announcement article: https://now.tufts.edu/news-releases/tufts-university-announces-three-year-collaboration-dudley-street-neighborhood

All of Tufts work with DSNI in this partnership is centered around community ownership and governance of land and food economy. Much of it is dedicated to supporting the growth of the community land trust (CLT) model and its application to permanent affordable housing (anti-displacement), urban farming, and sustainable economic development.

DSNI is a nonprofit community-based planning and organizing entity birthed in 1984 out of the passion, ingenuity and determination of Dudley residents seeking to reclaim a neighborhood that had been ravaged by disinvestment, arson fires and dumping. DSNI’s mission is to empower Dudley residents to organize, plan for, create and control a vibrant, diverse and high quality neighborhood in collaboration with community partners.

The Program was extended through 2021, culminating in this final report after 30 years of work: https://pennloh-practical.vision/2021/02/12/core-assessment-report/

Its findings include:
- CORE strives for a new standard of reciprocity in community-university partnerships. The program takes on the challenge of working around an academic, semester-by-semester schedule by sustaining partnerships with community organizations over a span of three to five years, integrating teaching, research, and practice.
- Of critical importance to the partnership is the co-creation of shared goals and values, knowledge and action, built on relationships of trust and transparency.
- CORE has become DSNI’s “research arm” and is helping DSNI develop its capacity. CORE has helped cultivate a deeper bench of leadership at DSNI, with three UEP students being hired as staff at DSNI and two DSNI staff entering UEP’s mid-career MPP program in recent years.
- CORE has contributed to the launch of the Greater Boston Community Land Trust Network, the development of a land trust operations manual for DSNI, and supporting DSNI’s co-facilitation with City of Boston of a process to develop an arts and innovation district in the neighborhood.
- CORE has also helped UEP develop its curriculum through courses that are open to community residents, such as Teaching Democracy (a popular education train-the-trainers program) and UEP’s Community Practicum, which has been co-designed with DSNI.
- It has also expanded resources for the community partner. Tufts’ commitment to multi-year funding has allowed DSNI to plan ahead. UEP and DSNI won a a multi-year federal community action grant to further expand its collaborative work.

CAFEH is a series of research and implementation projects that are all either community-based participatory research (CBPR) or community engaged research (CEnR) in which community partners are co-investigators (and in one case co-principal investigator). The projects are run democratically. CAFEH makes sure to have community partners as co-authors.

The CAFEH partnership combines community and academic resources to advance scientific understanding of the health risks of highway pollution. The research efforts are being actively translated into policy and practice in both the partner communities (primary) and at the municipal and state level (secondary). They hope the findings will continue to inform policymakers about the risks of siting new housing, schools or playgrounds next to highways and help to identify measures to reduce exposures.
https://www.cafehresearch.org/

In September 2017, Tufts University entered into a partnership with the largest clean technology incubator in the U.S., Greentown Labs.

Based in Somerville, Massachusetts, Greentown Labs is the largest incubator in the world for cleantech startups. Greentown provides co-working space for the development of projects focused on renewable power, sustainable transportation, battery storage, industrial waste recycling, and a variety of other focus areas.

Through this partnership, Greentown Labs and Tufts share their collective expertise, resources, and networks to collaborate with and support a network of local startup companies and entrepreneurs who combat environmental issues through advancement and innovation.
https://greentownlabs.com/partners/