The Social Science Research Institute’s Community-Engaged Research, Action and Partnerships (CERAP) unit and the College of the Liberal Arts' Child Study Center (CSC) hosted the 2026 Innovation Hub Symposium, “Community-Engaged Research for Public Impact: Process to Policy,” in early February.
The symposium centered on bringing Penn State faculty together with community partners, practitioners and others to learn more about community-engaged research and how to harness this approach to improve the lives of diverse children, youth and families. The CSC’s Innovation Hub Symposium is a biennial event designed to examine and explore innovative ways to conceptualize translational research around a particular topic.
Drawing over one hundred people throughout the day, including through the Zoom livestream, the symposium opened with a brief welcome from CSC co-directors, Jenae Neiderheiser, distinguished professor of psychology and human development and family studies and SSRI co-funded faculty member, and Rina Eiden, professor of psychology and SSRI co-funded faculty member.
Following the welcome, the event kicked off with remarks from Andrew Read, senior vice president for research at Penn State. Read discussed Penn State’s interest in building capacity for community-engaged research, and how salient working with communities on their needs will become given the current political and cultural climate.
The symposium’s morning session encompassed presentations from CERAP co-directors Dawn Witherspoon, professor of psychology and director of PACT (Parents And Children Together), Lori Francis, professor of biobehavioral health; Velma McBride Murry, Lois Autrey Betts Endowed Chair and university distinguished professor of human and organizational development at Vanderbilt University; Kristen Goessling, director of participatory research at Penn State Center Philadelphia and CERAP co-director; and Elan C. Hope, vice president for research and evaluation at Policy Research Associates. All the presentations focused on the process of engaging in community-university partnerships, showing that building authentic, mutually beneficial relationships with community stakeholders helped make changes down the road.
“It’s not rocket science; it’s just getting out of your comfortable house,” said Murry, referring to getting out of the comfort zone of being a researcher and seeking to form genuine ties with communities.
In the afternoon, faculty members, practitioners and community leaders met for a brainstorming and idea-sharing session to better utilize community-engaged research methodologies through various forms of dissemination like information sharing. The group also discussed how they might guide the field in overcoming challenges and obstacles like capacity and funding constraints. They concluded that work needed to start with addressing funding constraints and creating a network of existing resources at Penn State to share with community partners. The full photo gallery of the event is available here.
The CSC supports four interdisciplinary research initiatives, 57 major externally funded research projects, two federally funded graduate training programs and a professional training institute, creating a unique and vibrant interdisciplinary community committed to the shared mission of harnessing the power of developmental science to improve children’s lives. The CSC also works in tandem with the Penn State Psychological Clinic to support professional development and promote the accessibility of empirically supported best practices in the promotion of child and adolescent development, well-being and mental health intervention. Collaborative community-university partnerships facilitate connections across the state, in particular, Parents And Children Together (PACT), a community-university partnership in the Harrisburg area, as well as partnerships in the York area.
The Social Science Research Institute’s mission is to foster novel, interdisciplinary collaborations by investigators who aim to address critical human and social problems at the local, national, and international levels and to translate and disseminate this knowledge into measurable outcomes for human behavior, health and development.