Office of Community-Based Research

The Office of Community-Based Research (OCBR), University of Victoria, British Columbia, was established in 2007 in response to the desire of students and academics to pursue a community-based approach to their research and by community and campus members wanting to form mutually supportive research partnerships which lead to action on societal issues. A scan of the university in 2005 found that the practice of community-based research was fairly widespread but that many felt that little support was available to those wishing to pursue a career that included community-based research. The scan was followed by a university-wide symposium to see what kinds of energy existed for networking at the university itself. When nearly 20 per cent of the entire academic staff showed up for the symposium, the senior university administration felt that it was time to find a way to better institutionalize the evolving interests. In 2006, the administration then supported a six-month-long consultation and planning process with international and national advisors, multi-sector community members, funders, First Nations and campus members. When it was launched in 2007, OCBR became the first university-wide and community-university co-governed entity of its kind in English-speaking Canada.

The OCBR has worked to build capacity for community-university research partnerships that could enhance the quality of life and the economic, environmental and social well-being of communities. Its founding director, Dr Budd Hall, established a working motto necessitated by both the small size of the unit and its philosophy of collaboration: ‘It will do nothing that someone else is already doing and it will do nothing on its own’. Importantly, the OCBR was designed in function and form to be a joint project of the community and the university. A steering committee was formed to govern the work, with the head of a region-serving community organization and the vice president of research appointed as co-chairs. This steering committee, along with an external advisory group of internationally renowned experts in community-university engagement, was weighted equally between community-based and academic champions of community-based research (CBR) and campus-community partnerships. The steering committee has been fully involved in strategic planning and evaluation, and as public representatives and spokespersons for this Canadian and global pilot. The OCBR situated itself as a regional and Canadian incubator and hub for other Canadian and global efforts such as CBR Canada and the GACER (Global Alliance for Community Engaged Research), the latter supporting the European campus-community engagement and research/science shop movement. The shared vision between OCBR and the other national and global entities has been increasing the accessibility, relevance and responsibility of higher education in the broader society and the world.

While acknowledging that CBR involves community groups but not necessarily the university, for the purposes of the OCBR, it was defined as a collaborative enterprise between academic and community members that seeks to democratize knowledge creation by validating multiple sources of knowledge and promoting the use of multiple methods of discovery and dissemination. The goal of CBR, adapted from Strand, Marullo, Cutforth, Stoecker, and Donohue's (2003) discussion of best practice for CBR, is social action (broadly defined) for the purpose of achieving (directly or indirectly) healthy and sustainable communities. [Page 568]Indeed, as the work of the OCBR evolved in parallel with other initiatives at the university such as knowledge mobilization, service learning and civic engagement strategies, the terms community engagement and community-engaged research became more reflective of the work of the OCBR. Community-engaged research refers to scholarly activity that requires partnership development, co-operation and negotiation and commitment to addressing community issues. For the practices of the OCBR, it further meant supporting mutually beneficial community-university research partnerships.

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