Common Ground

Common Ground is a University Teaching & Learning Project developed in response to a grant request to "develop choruses and extra-curricular opportunities that connect students to persons, agencies, and institutions beyond the academy through meaningful collaborations."

History is the Ground for Community Partnerships. The sense of that past may shape what a community understands about not only its common experiences but also its goals and values. It is essential to lay out the background, the context, and the history, which may be complex, fraught, or even violent and which need to be acknowledged and shared to move forward.

In 2020-2021, Drs. Maureen Elgersman Lee and Karin Wulf led a team of 14 members from four of W&M's schools and community partners, including Historic First Baptist Church, Colonial Williamsburg, Highland, the Lemon Project, Special Education Advocacy Clinic, Office of Community Engagement, and W&M Libraries to elicit information about community partnerships across the university. Simultaneously, the team explored the literature on community-engaged pedagogy with The Studio for Teaching and Learning Innovation.
In 2021-2022, Drs. Monica Griffin and Maureen Elgersman Lee led the team in developing a framework to offer insight on establishing and sharing histories as the ground for successful partnerships and an illustrative "how-to" guide that offers ideas on how to approach each element of the framework.
In 2022-2023, the team partnered with project leaders to launch four pilot initiatives in which group leaders utilize the Common Ground Framework in whole or in part, depending on the community partnership's development stage. The grant provided funding for the group leader and all group members. One of the pilot groups decided to delay their implementation of the framework to 2023-2024, and one group was unable to participate. The team gathered feedback from the group leaders and members on the implementation of the framework to provide insight into the framework itself, the implementation process, and any revisions that could strengthen the approach.
In 2023-2024, we will support the Lemon Project team in implementing the CG framework. After that, we want to create a robust guide/toolkit/course to empower folks to build or enhance their own community partnerships. We hope to capture stories and insights as more groups use the framework and tools to revise and develop the work iteratively.