CCDD's Purpose: Research

CCDD's research mission is integrated with its service and education missions. By focusing on applied research, CCDD projects meet real community and agency needs. At the same time, faculty and apprentice professionals are given the opportunity to test research ideas and methodologies while students learn and practice practical research skills. When knowledge is applied and created in community contexts, parties involved enjoy synergistic benefits. CCDD client benefits were detailed in the section of service. This section will focus on the benefits to researchers.

Applied research is an important component of most individual and any institutional research plans. It gives researchers the opportunity to test and evaluate ideas that may still be in the development stage. Also, by focusing attention on the practical needs of collaborating clients, researchers are more likely to arrive at insights that could enhance theory developments and research methodologies. The data collected and analyzed may also be used for professional publications. The work helps researchers better understand the practical significance of theoretical discoveries. It helps them improve their understanding of the practical, theoretical, and community contexts in which they work. Relationships among concepts, data, contexts, methodologies and results become clearer. In addition, applied research improves teaching by strengthening the links between theory, practice, and reality and by providing highly contextualized examples to present to students (especially when the students are involved in the research as well).

Disciplines incorporating community research projects benefit from the application of knowledge in community settings while supplementing the field of community development. By applying research and knowledge to community problems, we work towards more efficient and productive solutions. One example of this is the yearlong process of producing a master plan for the North End Neighborhood in Colorado Springs, which involved the work of many faculty and students from two CU campuses. CCDD staff worked with a large and diverse group to produce the first local master plan for an older, built-out neighborhood in Colorado Springs, and developed a practical manual for other neighborhoods to use in similar efforts. Planners Press then republished this monograph as a book entitled, Neighborhood Planning: A Citizen's Guide, which has sold approximately 3,500 copies nationwide.

A similar, recent effort in groundwater protection has already helped four Colorado communities improve groundwater protection planning. CCDD faculty, staff, and students worked with the communities to develop a detailed manual that helps local staff and volunteers apply the Center's community development approach to groundwater protection efforts. The Center garnered two prestigious, state-wide awards for the project: the 1996 Governor's Smart Growth Award as the Best Pollution Prevention Project in the State and the 1996 Best Student Project Award from the Colorado Chapter of the American Planning Association. It has received national recognition with the award of a 1998 Certificate of Environmental Achievement from Renew America's National Awards for Environmental Sustainability.

Some universities (especially land grant universities) have identified, substantial outreach missions and use professional staff to deliver services and help bring newly created knowledge to end users. These institutions enjoy great public and financial support from these outreach efforts and have built-in feedback systems for researchers concerned with the applicability of their insights and inventions. CCDD provides a similar service to communities and to the campus, but uses a different model for research generation, funding and administration.

From the perspectives of communities, CU-Colorado Springs has a wealth of knowledge and talent to be tapped. There are, however, many significant barriers to their use of this expertise (e.g., knowing what help might be available; knowing who to call; understanding the campus bureaucracy, schedule and reward systems; understanding funding and research design needs; understanding how to work with students; administering research). Likewise, many faculty and students would like to be more involved in helping to solve community problems - both for academic and civic reasons. Here again, there are barriers (e.g., understanding community needs and time frames for action; understanding formats for the practical use of information and research; working with lay public participants; oral and written communication patterns; integrating applied and basic research; managing student participation in applied research; funding for time commitments and research costs; and campus reward systems).

Overcoming these barriers requires both an intense will to improve a community and detailed knowledge of the community, agencies and academic cultures involved. CCDD has this will and knowledge, and has been successful in many contexts. Sometimes we remove these barriers and sometimes we transform them into assets. An example of the latter is when we design research that meets both practical client needs and the applied research and theory-building needs of faculty so that the research leads to several types of publication and dissemination by faculty and students. Much of our work involving survey research fits this mold and is often too expensive for faculty to undertake without a paying client. However, with the client covering research costs and paying for some of the faculty members' time, everyone wins.

Students also receive many benefits from research organized and administered by CCDD as was noted in the educational section of this report. By involving them in research and publication, we significantly enhance their employment and earning potential. After recognizing this trend many years ago, one faculty member and CCDD Board Member (Eve Gruntfest) helped CCDD develop a professional training track in environmental studies with funding from several state and local agencies that needed professional help. This effort has helped many students and developing professionals gain experience and find permanent employment through us.

The University benefits from an organization that facilitates applied research and allows the campus to respond to complex needs that require long-term involvement but different skills at different times. An individual faculty member may not need institutional support to assist an organization with one aspect of a complex research and development effort at a certain point in time. However, a stable, reliable, and interested institutional partner provides the University with a pool of individuals skilled in many areas, which can work over an extended period.

A good example of CCDD's involvement of this kind is its work on the Great Plains Reservoirs. Over a period of 15 years, Landscape Architecture and Civil Engineering faculty and students from CU-Denver, Law faculty from CU-Boulder, UCCS Economics faculty, CCDD staff and UCCS students analyzed the resources available to support agricultural, recreational, and municipal water service and economic development needs in Southeast Colorado. The work also required extensive community development and conflict mediation efforts that have succeeded in helping the project gain wide local support and $7.5 million in state funding to develop a state park in an under-served part of Colorado.

CCDD has been able to reduce the barriers for community, agency, and campus groups and, in the process, has:

1. greatly increased the number of faculty and students involved in applied research and the number of communities and agencies served (368 faculty and 2,234 students, including repeat participants, have worked on CCDD projects);
2. helped the campus become involved in finding solutions for very complex community problems and involved over 61,000 people in the process;
3. helped many organizations implement positive changes with funding and staff support generated by our involvement;
4. disseminated research results in a wide variety of ways in order to make the results meaningful and useful to the public and to those concerned with the issues investigated;
5. published 89 research monographs in CCDD's Community Development Monograph Series and produced over 300 other research products such as maps, site plans, research analysis handouts and curricula for campus and community courses and trainings;
6. provided many students with their first opportunities to author publications based on their original research;
7. provided faculty and students with the means to document and disseminate their research, potentially leading to other research products and funding;
8. provided faculty and students with research opportunities that have led to many professional presentations, articles, and books;
9. provided over $300,000 in salaries and benefits to faculty to support their involvement in applied research;
10. provided nearly $1 million to students to support their involvement in applied research;
11. provided over $2.1 million to CCDD staff (most of them interning or apprenticing professionals) to support their applied research efforts;
12. provided nearly $800,000 for service, education, and research expenses; and
13. provided funding to the campus directly (through ICR) and indirectly by keeping CCDD active on campus and in the communities as a self-sustaining organization since 1993.

Read about our congruence with Campus and University missions...