Titled “Disrupting power structures to promote equity in community-based learning,” this conversation championed ways in which relational power dynamics between academic institutions and community partners can be equitably reformed. This session was guided by two overarching questions: 1) How might we engender robust self-examination around the question of whether academic programs are operating in equitable or paternalistic ways? and 2) What can academic practitioners do to break down barriers to true equity in community partnerships and meaningfully enhance equity in program design, execution, and evaluation?

Best practice models in community-based learning, such as Fair Trade Learning, emphasize that academic practitioners must equitably co-create programs with community partners. While many practitioners agree with these aspirational standards, bringing them to life poses challenges. Communities that have been historically subject to colonialism and exploitation may not feel empowered to lead. Community partners may not consider it possible to co-create because of deeply rooted assumptions that academic institutions lead and community partners follow.

Academic programs often approach partners to seek their approval for complete/nearly complete memorandums of understanding, project plans, and course syllabi. This can happen intentionally or be the product of assumptions about the default way of doing things. Such approaches do not display equitable co-design through collaboration. Embedded and presumed imbalances in power dynamics that exist between academic institutions and community partners need to be acknowledged and comprehensively explored. Partnership outcomes must focus on mutual benefit instead of primarily privileging student benefits and outcomes. And the senior leadership and counsel’s offices of academic institutions must understand that it is healthy to cede significant components of control over partnerships while, at the same time, doing everything required to keep students and community partners safe.

Mathew Gendle, director of Project Pericles and professor of psychology, and alum Georgia Daniel ’24 have published research appearing in the most recent issue of the “American Journal of Psychology.”

Titled “Relationships Between Orthorexia, Exercise Dependency, Body Image, and Decision-Making in University Undergraduates”, this manuscript discusses research that provides two significant new conclusions.

First, individuals self-reporting traits linked to orthorexia nervosa, body dysmorphia and/or exercise dependency do not demonstrate altered decision-making strategies like those associated with substance use disorders. This is a critical finding that calls into question the common, everyday use of terms like “exercise addiction” and the equivalence that is frequently implied between excessive exercise behaviors and substance dependencies.

Second, heightened levels of fitness-related social media engagement are significantly correlated with increased behaviors related to exercise dependence and body dysmorphia. However, the cause-and-effect relationship between these variables remains unknown. Does engagement with certain types of social media drive behaviors linked to exercise dependence and body dysmorphia, or are individuals who engage in these behaviors drawn to social media content that mirrors what they are already experiencing? Future research will need to directly assess this question.

While at Elon, Daniel was an Elon College Fellow. She is currently completing a Master of Social Work at UNC-Chapel Hill.

Hosted by Charles Sturt University in Wagga Wagga, NSW, Australia, the Asia Pacific Hub will serve as a growing network of practitioners committed to ethical, inclusive, and impact-driven education. It will connect educators, students, and community partners through shared learning, regional storytelling, and transformative practice.

The event featured multiple panelists who shared their expertise on community-based approaches to global learning and ethical partnership development. Other members of the event’s panel were:

• Mike Bishop, managing director, The Community-Based Global Learning Collaborative
• Amy Somchanhmavong, associate director, Global Community-Engaged Learning Programs, Cornell University
• Janelle Wheat, pro vice-chancellor (Learning & Teaching), Charles Sturt University

Some session-supporting quotes and themes (provided by the event organizers) include:

On repositioning the Asia Pacific:

“We’re not bringing global learning to the Asia Pacific, we’re bringing Asia Pacific wisdom to global learning.”

On decolonial methodology:

“True decolonization means more than inclusion; it means fundamentally restructuring who leads, how we learn, and what counts as knowledge.”

On regional innovation:

“The Asia Pacific Hub isn’t adapting Western models, we’re generating distinctively regional approaches to ethical global engagement.”

On community leadership:

“Community-based global learning isn’t about working with communities, it’s about communities working with us on their terms, for their priorities.”

On epistemological pluralism:

“We’re moving from learning about other cultures to learning from other ways of knowing the world.”

On institutional transformation:

“Genuine partnership requires institutions to be willing to be fundamentally changed by the relationship, not just to create change elsewhere.”

On reciprocity redefined:

“Reciprocity isn’t about equal exchange, it’s about mutual transformation through sustained relationship.”

On postcolonial positioning:

“We reject the binary of helper and helped, instead embracing the complexity of mutual learning across difference.”

The Scholars engaged with local communities in Moratuwa, Batticaloa, Ampara, and Badulla, and learned a great deal about Sri Lankan history, culture, and the everyday lives of both rural and urban citizens. Over the next two years, the Scholars will be partnering with Sarvodaya (Sri Lanka’s oldest and largest non-governmental organization) on one or more community-centered projects related to women’s empowerment, LGBTQIA2S+ advocacy and/or educational inequities.

Through participation in multiple shramadanas (shared gifts of collective labor), the Scholars worked side-by-side with community members on several short-term community enhancement projects, and in so doing, established and built interpersonal relationships with local communities that will be foundational in their future work.

During the fall semester, the Scholars will employ what they have learned through continued engagement with their partners in the development of shared community empowerment and self-sufficiency projects.

The presentation, titled “Associations between rates of undergraduate participation in study abroad and institutional percentages of student receiving Pell Grants,” examined common assumptions about the relationships between these metrics.

The abstract for their presentation was as follows:

“Participation in study abroad positively impacts student development and is heavily emphasized within U.S. higher education. Yet, the overall proportion of undergraduates who study abroad is small as multiple barriers to participation remain. This study examined the relationship between institutional rates of study abroad participation and percentages of undergraduate Pell Grant recipients. Significant relationships between these two variables were not found in the overall dataset (p = 0.71), or for doctoral universities (p = 0.14), masters colleges/universities (p = 0.81), or baccalaureate colleges (p = 0.82). These findings contradict assumptions about study abroad participation rates within student populations of significant financial need. Potential barriers to study abroad are many and understanding the factors that inhibit study abroad is critical to ensure equitable access.”

The conference website can be accessed

Karpyn and Gendle shared a presentation titled “Beyond the Numbers: Rethinking Success in Higher Education Community Partnerships” that critiqued assessment efforts that utilize algorithmic “big data” approaches in attempts to measure the quality of institutional-community partnerships. As an alternative, Karpyn and Gendle championed qualitative and mixed methodologies that prioritize trust, reciprocity and mutual benefit over quantitative measures such as physical distance between academic institutions and community partners, amount of dollars transferred to partner, and the temporal duration of partnerships.

Karpyn and Gendle asserted that the true value of a community partnership lies in the impact it has on lives, perspective, and knowledge sharing. Although quantitative measures can play a role in thoughtful mixed-measures evaluation strategies for partnerships, qualitative measures that capture the complexity and true value of partnerships must be embraced.

A broader discussion of these issues can be accessed in a written by Karpyn and Gendle and published by the Community-Based Global Learning Collaborative on Dec. 18, 2024.

In this work, entitled the authors present a comprehensive evaluation instrument specifically designed for use by community-based global learning programs. The CEPI addresses a widespread need for open-source program development tools that are flexible and systematic in their approach.

The abstract for the article is as follows: “As community-based global learning (CBGL) programs become more common on college/university campuses and increasingly utilize the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals to guide programmatic outcomes, open-access assessment instruments that both benchmark and effectively measure programmatic enhancements over time are needed. The 147-item Community Engagement and Partnership Inventory (CEPI) provides a comprehensive set of aspirational CBGL best-practice statements in an easy-to-use, assessment-friendly format, and the CEPI-SF (short form) offers an abridged 47-item inventory for assessment strategies that do not require the level of detail offered by the full length CEPI. The CEPI/CEPI-SF provides a systematic evaluation of programs, applying the principles of critical global inquiry such that methods of administration and scoring can be flexible and tailored to program and institutional needs. The use of the CEPI/CEPI-SF as a tool for program evaluation, development, and best practice benchmarking is intended to support the development, sustainability, and long-term growth of CBGL activities that stress reciprocity, equity, and justice.”

Published by the Department of Tourism Management, Faculty of Management Studies at Sabaragamuwa University of Sri Lanka, Tourism in Paradise provides a forum for academics, travel and hospitality industry professionals, government officials and university students to engage in constructive dialogue about economic development and ethical practice related to tourism in South Asia.

In this essay, entitled, “Doing a disservice to Sri Lanka: John Gimlette’s Elephant Complex,” Gendle provides an ethically centered criticism of Gimlette’s work. Gendle asserts that “Elephant Complex” is little more than a “chronicle of a foreigner who lacks cultural humility, self-awareness, and genuine respect for the places and people he encounters.” Gendle writes that like many travelogues of South Asia written by materially affluent white Westerners, Gimlette’s book traffics in gross overgeneralizations, problematic objectification, and quiet condescension of the people and communities he interacts with on his journey throughout Sri Lanka.

Full-text of this essay is

NAFSA is the world’s largest and most diverse nonprofit organization dedicated to international education and exchange.

Tapler and Gendle shared a presentation, titled “Centering Community Voices in the Evaluation of Global Learning Programs,” that was part of a session dedicated to increasing diversity, equity, and inclusion in higher education. This presentation outlined techniques that meaningfully incorporate host community voices in the development, execution, analysis and dissemination of assessment outcomes within community-based global learning contexts.

Gendle, along with colleagues from Haverford College (Eric Hartman), Northeastern University (Amy Stevens), and the University of Dayton (Paul Geis) also co-led a panel, titled “Assessing Global Learning as a Tool for International Education Leadership,” that highlighted best-practices related to assessment of global learning outcomes in relation to rubrics established by the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U).

Through a network of educational institutions and community organizations, the Collaborative advances ethical, critical, and aspirationally de-colonial community-based learning and research for more just, inclusive, and sustainable communities. It is hosted by the  at Haverford College in Haverford, PA.