University and community collaboration focus of new book from University of Southern Queensland

On 30 May 2014,  Cr. Paul Antonio, Mayor of the Toowoomba Regional Council in Queensland, Australia launched the book, Community Capacity building: Lessons from adult learning in Australia, published by NIACE and edited by Professor Glen Postle, Professor Lorelle Burton and Professor Patrick Danaher, all academics at the University of Southern Queensland(USQ) in Toowoomba.

This launch took place in Toowoomba’s CBD at ‘The Grid’ and 69 people representing higher education, government agencies, community groups and non-government organisations attended the launch.

Community Capacity Building aims to provide a place where stories about significant community capacity building initiatives involving universities in partnership with communities can be told. As higher education workers, who over a number of years had developed significant and unique partnerships with community members, we felt that it was imperative that these stories should not only be told, but that the nature of these partnerships should be presented in a manner that best portrayed the shared learning that emanated from these experiences– a collaborative writing process involving academics and community members/practitioners working together. The authors believe that universities have an important role in contributing to the health of their community when communities are fragmenting and relationships are fraying. As I said at the launch I'd like to see university research embrace the concept of civic mindedness in new ways. ‘Research in the social sciences should be measured not by the number of academic articles an academic publishes but by the impact of his or her research in the community and on the building of social capital.’

Speakers at the launch included Professor Janet Verbyla (Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor at USQ), Professor John Cole (Executive Director, Institute for Resilient Regions at USQ) and Emeritus Professor Bill Lovegrove, recently retired from the position of Vice Chancellor at USQ and Professor Glen Postle, Honorary Professor at USQ. MC for the event was Professor Lorelle Burton Professor (Psychology) in the School of Psychology, Counselling and Community at USQ.

Members of the group who have participated in PASCAL's PURE study of Darling Downs also contributed to the book. Professor Chris Duke, team leader for the Darling Downs PURE study wrote a summary for the book, while Professor Bruce Wilson and Professor Steve Garlick contributed to chapters.