In this chapter we hear from differently positioned participants from a number of University-Community Links (UC Links) programs, both ones that are described in this book, and a few that are not. (See https://uclinks.berkeley.edu/ for more information about UC Links programs and the global UC Links network.) These participants responded to an invitation to share their experiences, in their own voices, in any way they chose. The nine testimonies that we cluster in this chapter illuminate how the UC Links experience transformed participants’ views of teaching, learning, and research.

This chapter opens with two testimonials from a UC Links program that isn’t otherwise represented in the volume: the Santa Cruz County Youth Action Network (YAN). YAN is another program that includes faculty from the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC): Saskias Casanova and Regina (Gina) Langhout (Psychology), Steve McKay (Sociology) and Jessica Taft (Latino and Latin American Studies). UCSC faculty partner with the United Way of Santa Cruz County as well as many other partner organizations (such as Jóvenes SANOS—“Healthy Youth”—highlighted in the testimonial below) to support youth in conducting participatory action research (YPAR). Through this work, young people throughout Santa Cruz County and UCSC undergraduate and graduate students engage in Community Initiated Student Engaged Research (CISER), which brings together students, researchers, and community partners to generate new knowledge, initiate community and policy-related dialog, and improve community wellbeing. YAN’s work is currently focused on mental health.

Adrian Ramirez (University of California, Santa Cruz, Youth Action Network)

Adrian Ramirez

(High school student in Watsonville, California, participating in the Youth Action Network UC Links program (http://www.sccyan.org/)).

The first time I saw Jóvenes SANOS was at a youth fair. I joined in 2022. At the time I thought it would be good to try something out because I didn’t have any other extracurricular activities lined up. My joining was on a whim. Jóvenes SANOS was the bridge to my experiences in the Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) program. Part of what kept me coming back were the things we were talking about that have importance, such as spreading awareness about mental health and being involved in activities I would not normally have the chance to do on such a scale. I think the YPAR program is an exceptional opportunity for middle and high school students to gain practical experience and make a difference in the community. Getting to communicate and work alongside UCSC students felt really special, even as the work was weighted more so toward the college students since YPAR met only once a month. Still, youth made the most important decisions, like picking the topic, how to collect information, and now, how we understand the survey results. Talking to UCSC students was not only interesting, but it also helped me understand why someone would be interested in the paths that they chose. I enjoyed handing out the survey and looking over the results. It was quite the experience learning how infuriating the process is of walking around the same place for a few hours, hoping that the survey takers actually read the questions. It was especially annoying when a Santa Cruz city council member said we could not approach possible participants, due to a “no soliciting” city policy, but we could talk with them if they came up to us. I learned that to sway decision-makers, we need to collect a lot of surveys and we need to carefully consider the results. It’s not enough to talk to five or 10 people to make a persuasive argument to city or county decision-makers. Understanding the process allows me to appreciate qualitative and quantitative data beyond numbers and statistics, and understand the effort it takes to get enough responses. YPAR was a lot cooler than many other after-school activities that I could’ve chosen. We are actually doing something, like creating our own survey and handing it out countywide, and going to events to ask people to take the survey. I felt like the YPAR program was worth attending and I actually felt fulfilled in my efforts after all was said and done.

Gabriella Garcia (University of California, Santa Cruz, Youth Action Network)

Gabriella Garcia is an undergraduate at UC Santa Cruz participating in the Youth Action Network UC Links program (http://www.sccyan.org/).

Going into the 2022–2023 academic year, I had very little understanding of what “community” meant in an academic context, and, beyond that, what it meant in a social justice context. I had heard it thrown around as a buzzword in various papers, books, and news reports, but my own conceptualization of “community” was a vague, person-shaped blur. I found myself in Dr. Regina Langhout’s community psychology class at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC), where we discussed and described community in ways I had never considered: community as co-constructed, community as a place of discourse, community as a source of strength and vision, as resistance. I was especially moved by community as a source of resistance—as a Queer woman of color who grew up in a predominantly White, cis-heterosexual context, I grew up without community in many ways.

This reframing of community was transformative as I became involved as a co-researcher with the UCSC Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR)-Community Initiated Student Engaged Research (CISER) UC Links project led by Drs. Regina Langhout and Steve McKay. In the student-engaged classes that I took, I found an academic community that I had never experienced in my three years at UCSC. I was surrounded by other Queer academics, academics of color, academics with disabilities, and many, many more people and peers that I quickly grew close to, and grew alongside. This community helped support me during a time of personal struggle and turmoil, and helped me stay afloat in many ways. They became people close to my heart, and my experiences with them, and with the youth, non-profit organizations, professors, graduate students, and others cultivated a desire to dedicate my life to this kind of community-based work. I saw in this project a future that I had never considered as possible for myself: I could be a teacher, a student, an organizer, and so much more, all at once. It was a powerful vision, and has motivated me to seriously pursue graduate studies in community psychology programs across the United States. I remain involved in the UCSC YPAR-CISER project to this day, and am incredibly thankful for the opportunities for learning, growth, and change that I have experienced since joining the project.

J.C. Leapman (University of California, Davis, Beta Lab)

J.C. Leapman is a graduate student researcher and facilitator at the UC Davis Beta Lab makerspace UC Links program (Chap. 9).

My experience with UC Links has been wonderful, providing a vital source of community and inspiration throughout my academic journey. Entering my PhD program amidst the challenging backdrop of the COVID-19 lockdowns left me searching for a sense of support and belonging during my first year. Midway through my second year, I entered the UC Links community through my involvement with the UC Davis Beta Lab makerspace (Chap. 9). What immediately struck me was the genuine warmth, camaraderie, and support from the brilliant, compassionate members of this network.

I am grateful for the diverse array of opportunities that UC Links offers for connection, collaboration, and support. The regular Zoom meetings and the annual conference have led to many interesting conversations about working with communities, undergraduates, and youth in more caring, equitable, and engaging ways. The UC Links conferences have been particularly inspiring. The fun-filled, multimodal, interdisciplinary sessions always rejuvenate my passion for what I do. The theme for the 2023 conference, “Co-constructing Sustainable Futures” centered on sustainability in all its facets (environmental, economic, retention, and wellbeing), inspired me to rethink and revamp Beta Lab’s makerspace sessions. It spurred me to explore innovative ways to minimize resource waste and prioritize the wellbeing of our community partners, undergraduate mentors, and youth participants. Embracing the concept of holistic sustainability has added a new layer of depth and purpose to our endeavors.

In summary, UC Links has not only provided me with a sense of belonging and a supportive community but has also inspired me to approach my work with a fresh perspective, emphasizing holistic sustainability and wellbeing. Participating in UC Links has been instrumental in shaping my commitment to creating meaningful, inclusive, and sustainable educational experiences within Beta Lab and beyond.

The next three testimonials are from a UC Links program that isn’t otherwise represented in this volume. The Brigham Young University (BYU) UC Links program located in Provo, Utah engages university faculty and staff in the Department of Anthropology (Greg Thompson, Katherine Watkins, Elizabeth Schulte) and undergraduate students from a range of other majors (e.g., sociology, education, physics, psychology, etc.) with community partners from a United Way sponsored neighborhood center in a nearby subsidized housing community. University undergraduates spend 2 days a week in an undergraduate course learning about community-university partnerships and spend 1–2 days a week collaborating with community members at the community center. Together, they undertake a co-designed research project of interest and value to the local community.

Jonathan Segura (Brigham Young University)

Jonathan Segura participated in the Brigham Young University UC Links program as an undergraduate student.

As a student, I had the opportunity through Brigham Young University and UC Links to take a class whose purpose was to get experience doing qualitative research at a local community center. As part of our class, we were required to spend at least 2 hours each week at the community center and in the community. My class split up into three groups, each focusing on a different research question. Throughout the semester we moved through the entire research process beginning with creating a research question and ending with presenting a solution to that question to the center leadership. Our first step of the research process was to meet with center leaders to discuss major problems that they believed would require more data and focus to create a solution that would benefit the center. We then identified research questions for each group to focus on. We then created a plan to utilize mixed research methods to gather data to address our research question. Finally, we presented our data along with our solution at the end of the semester. We completed surveys, interviews, took notes while doing participant observation, and participated in events, activities, and work to get data from several sources and perspectives. Collecting this data required close collaboration with all people involved in the community, including community members, center visitors, center volunteers, and center employees.

Participating in this class was a special opportunity because it allowed us the opportunity to learn and then apply our learning in a real-world setting. Most university classes involve only lectures and tests, but this class went way beyond that by applying that knowledge. After normal classroom time where we were instructed on research methods, tools, and approaches to both community development and design, we then had the required time in the community practicing what we learned in the classroom and applying it to a real project. Learning and then applying what I learned in a real-life project gave me a greater educational experience than just learning ever did, and it prepared me for life-after-college better than any purely classroom experience ever did. In addition to this personal benefit, I was also able to serve a community and present a solution to them that, I was told, would have an immediate impact in the work of the community center. Brigham Young University’s slogan is “Enter to learn; Go forth to serve.” This course helped to achieve both parts of the slogan while I was still a student instead of only achieving it after graduation.

Emily Helms (Brigham Young University)

Emily Helms participated in the Brigham Young University UC Links program as an undergraduate student.

Before my experience with Designing Community-Based Interventions (DCBI), Brigham Young University’s UC Links course, I thought I knew what Provo was: a college town full of college students. My college was, of course, the epicenter of this town and everything orbited around it. I knew non-college students lived in the area but assumed they all worked with the college somehow or catered to its students. This was a narrow view and it wasn’t challenged by my college education, until my DCBI class. I could have lived in Provo for my entire college education without interacting with the wider community. DCBI helped me recognize the huge swaths of my local community of which I was unaware.

This experience greatly humbled me and has entirely reshaped how I think about communities and building community. People in the community around my university had always existed but the university offered little to no opportunity for engagement.

The people I met in the Boulders, a subsidized housing community in Provo, were unsure of my presence and I was not readily welcomed. In a mirror image to my ignorance of them, they seemed to feel invisible. Even though they were contributing in many ways to the community and economy of the area, these often first-generation immigrants had basic needs that were not acknowledged or even noticed by the larger community of Provo. In turn, they felt disconnected from the community of which they were an essential part. The DCBI class helped me to have a small part in changing that.

I and some of my classmates were so inspired by our experiences in the class that we continued working with the community center to develop an after-school program for adolescent youth—a glaring omission from the services provided by the community center we had been partnering with.

I now work in Community Development for a small city near BYU that has undergone rapid growth. In this community I see the same thinking that I held as a student: long-term residents in the community seem ignorant and unaware of new members to the community (and perhaps older ones, i.e., Indigenous people, too). In turn, these newer and non-dominant members of the community are made to feel invisible. I regularly draw upon my experience with DCBI in my job as I work to help the established community members to see these others in their community so that they can build community together.

My experience in DCBI, both successes and failures, provided me with a foundation in community outreach that I now build on daily. If it wasn’t for my experience with UC Links I may not have had my own shift in perceptions that I rely so heavily on in my work.

Gregory A. Thompson (Brigham Young University)

Greg Thompson is an Anthropology professor at BYU. He was the original designer and instructor for the UC Links undergraduate course and has since supervised the teaching of the course.

Teaching the UC Links undergrad course was both inspiring and revealing. The inspiration came from the students who brought a genuine desire to be of service. This, along with the opportunity to (hopefully) participate in a form of expansive learning by collaborating with a nearby community center in Provo, Utah, made this class a joy to teach. (See Chap. 2 for a discussion of expansive learning.) Yet, teaching the class was not without its challenges, most of which arose from and revealed the perhaps unwitting but nonetheless troubling logic of the modern university, even at institutions that value “experiential learning.”

As I have experienced it, the modern university encourages a closed-off and encapsulated form of education in which some predetermined content that has been developed by the “elite” thinkers in a given field is delivered to individual students. The “learning” of that content is then assessed in a fashion that is supposed to be standardized across all students thus allowing for accurate comparisons of individual student learning—which are most typically assessed by regurgitative examinations. This logic tends to result in courses that are self-contained modules in which the content is decontextualized and disconnected from everyday life. Indeed, just as there is encapsulation of content, as former BYU undergraduate Emily Helms noted above, a student’s entire college experience can be physically encapsulated by the boundaries of the college campus.

Yet by its very nature, BYU’s UC Links course cuts against every one of these characteristics of the modern university. In contrast to the closed and encapsulated nature of the university’s educational logic, this course involved opening the college classroom to the community (and to the world).

First, since our task was to work with the community center to identify what they needed and then design something useful, it was impossible to determine the content of the course ahead of time. Even after student groups defined their topics (in collaboration with the community), the academic knowledge typically taught in university classrooms was useless without a rich understanding of the on-the-ground realities in the community. The knowledge that we, as a class, needed was radically emergent and could only be known by getting to know the community. This meant, first and foremost, listening to and learning from community members. In contrast to the university’s decontextualized and disconnected knowledge, this was a different kind of knowledge. We needed highly contextual first-hand practical knowledge about specific people’s experiences in this community. No textbook or academic article could provide that. Instead, students learned by doing participant observation, a practice where undergraduates spent time in the community and in conversation with community members and wrote weekly reflections of their observations and experiences in the community. Students also took rich and detailed ethnographic field notes documenting what they were learning in and from the community. Finally, in contrast to the individualism presumed by the university logic of education, relationships were essential. Students needed to develop relationships with other students with whom they were collaborating and, most importantly, they needed to cultivate relationships of mutual trust with those living in this community so that they could learn from and with them.

My experience revealed to me the troubling logics of the model of education that is implicitly favored by many universities today. The success of this course required a break with those logics and a move toward the logic of expansive learning. This is no easy task but is well worth it since, to my mind, learning that is relevant and useful is the best kind of learning that we can undertake.

Armando Olea Romero (University of California, Los Angeles, B-Club)

Armando Olea Romero participated in B-Club UC Links program (Chap. 6) as an undergraduate student.

As an undergraduate student at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), I had the privilege of participating in an undergraduate course in partnership with UC Links that allowed me to learn more about qualitative research through meaningful and intentional experiences at B-Club. Participating in B-Club was a unique opportunity as a student because it reaffirmed that academic experiences are not just tied to the classroom—at B-Club, students learn through play.

B-Club was a unique and multicultural space to learn about research, teaching, and service by applying theory to practice not found in any other course. We engaged with youth in an after-school setting to create learning opportunities while deepening our understanding of theories and readings in our course. At B-Club, undergraduates like myself learned from the youth and worked closely to develop activities around their interests. These activities embodied a focus on culture, communication, and play. Many of the youth were surprised that play was encouraged. It challenged the notion that play was a reward rather than a way of learning. I appreciated the value we placed on listening and the interests of the youth in creating this communal space. We brought our authenticity and knowledge to bring joy and knowledge outside of the university.

Throughout this course, I collaborated with the youth to create the video about B-Club that is described in the opening vignette to Chap. 6. (Watch B-Club video here: https://uclinks.berkeley.edu/chapter11). The youth took on the director role to describe the story and the videos they wanted to capture. The B-Club video showcased favorite moments, experiences, and various activities while keeping everybody engaged in any language they felt comfortable with. This video was a meaningful moment to bridge our knowledge as undergraduates and bring awareness to the interests and narratives at B-Club. When we started the project, I informed the youth that they would be in charge and I would support their vision. Their faces looked perplexed. I remember the curiosity and excitement when we captured different clips for this video. They learned about interviewing and how a drone operated. The final shot demonstrated what a community of learners looked like. We learned as much from the youth as they did from us.

B-Club broadened my understanding of qualitative research, teaching, and service and inspired me to explore new ways of engaging and learning from youth. I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity to participate in this course across various quarters because it allowed me to engage in various projects and share my positive experience with future participants. This course made the learning experiences beyond meaningful and impactful by providing a space to create, engage, and learn outside of the university and into the community. It fostered a strong sense of belonging among all the undergraduates and youth at B-Club.

Yasmeen Ramos (San José State University, Y-PLAN)

Yasmeen Ramos participated in the Youth-Plan, Learn, Act Now! (Y-PLAN) UC Links program (Chap. 14) as a graduate student.

Making a difference in my community has always been a passion of mine. Especially when it involves helping youth. I am infatuated with guiding youth through life skills that can be applicable to their future education and development. Before Y-PLAN, I was blind to the benefits that the organization offers to the youth in our community. Consequently, Y-PLAN provides students with the tools to be involved and make a difference in their community. Students are able to engage with their peers, teachers, and mentors. The majority of the students like myself had never had the opportunity to advocate for change in their community.

As a first-generation student, entering a community that aligns with my values and cultural upbringing has allowed me to work better and fully understand every student. Coming from an immigrant and Spanish-speaking household can be challenging for many students. Especially when they are asked to make a change in their community, because we often do not have role models or see little to no effort in the community. Nonetheless, I reassured every student that they would see a difference if we incorporated a sense of unity within the community. As mentioned before, working with youth has always been my population of interest. Primarily because ever since elementary school, I wanted to vocalize change in my community while simultaneously motivating grade school students to participate in their community. Although can be a barrier for many individuals, one can always come together and overcome any obstacle as a community. Moreover, learning originates through a sense of unity and community. For instance, in planning, creating surveys, and giving ideas, everyone was welcome to express their thoughts or suggestions through their native language, pictures, videos, and more. This provided Y-PLAN students with a safe environment where all their thoughts and ideas were considered.

Y-PLAN provides students with the opportunity to fully immerse themselves in the community. Moreover, during my time working with Y-PLAN, I gained insight into urban planning. Through this experience, I learned how our infrastructure maneuvers society, and dictates how we can further aid our youth with the necessary resources. More importantly, I became cognizant of how crucial it is to allow school-aged students to be involved in our community. Y-PLAN allowed me to understand that there can be change in our community. However, this can only be accomplished if we unite and voice our opinions.

Amrita Deo MA (San José State University, Y-PLAN)

Amrita Deo participated in the Youth-Plan, Learn, Act Now! (Y-PLAN) UC Links program (Chap. 14) as a graduate student.

As a first-generation student from East Palo Alto (EPA), one of the communities Y-PLAN has worked with in the San Francisco Bay Area (Chap. 14), youth have minimal access to leadership and team-oriented activities outside of participating in sports. Students living in historically marginalized communities, such as EPA, are often exposed to negative experiences in their neighborhoods, whether it is violence, substance use, or even something as simple as not having a safe or proper park to play or hang out. Having a Y-PLAN curriculum in classrooms is a way to ensure that all students are positively engaging with their community, while also building leadership and technical skills to address social justice issues that exist in historically marginalized communities. Y-PLAN addresses gaps in education and leadership opportunities for low-income students, which creates a protective factor for youth living in these communities and are exposed to risk factors more often than youth living in more affluent neighborhoods.

As one of the first San José State University (SJSU) Y-PLAN Fellows, participating in Y-PLAN blended my values and the work I am passionate about, while being able to practice real-life application of being a civic partner as a SJSU student and supporting students from the San José community. As with any California State University, practical application is essential to SJSU and gives students the opportunity to go into the field and apply what they learn in the classroom to an environment they might work in after graduation. However, what is unique about SJSU is it is centrally located, an open campus to the San José community, and a resource as needed to the city, school districts, and organizations in the area. With Y-PLAN having a hub at San José State, this can open many doors for San José youth to have the opportunity to help transform their neighborhoods by having support from an institution with strong community ties. Additionally, having San José State students supporting teachers and students with the work brings the program full circle as a large number of SJSU’s students are first-generation and grew up near the area. Through this experience, I have learned that having representation is critical for youth, and when they see representation, they know their ideas and opinions will be heard and understood.