Amanda Leech
President and CEO,
United Way of Central Shenandoah Valley
Why Town-Gown Partnerships Fail (and How Universities Can Fix Them)
Thursday, October 01, 2026 | 3:15PM–4:15PM MT
Session Type:
Poster Session
Delivery Format:
Poster Session
Student-community partnerships often end when the semester ends. What looks like experiential learning can unintentionally burden organizations, leave projects unused, and erode trust when community partners are treated as temporary or expendable. These partnerships often rely on individual champions to maintain momentum, creating fragile systems that collapse when those people move on. In this panel, a university lecturer and a nonprofit CEO share lessons from both sides of the partnerships we so often pursue. We explore strategies for designing equitable, sustainable collaborations that outlive the semester by centering community needs, co-creating project goals, and assessing student work for real-world impact. Attendees will learn how to align academic timelines with organizational capacity, embed iterative feedback, establish shared ownership, and measure long-term outcomes. Participants will leave with a practical framework for transforming short-term student projects into lasting civic contributions that strengthen learning, trust, and institutional-community relationships.
