Confronting Environmental Challenges on the US–Mexico Border: Long-Term Community-Based Research and Community Service Learning in a Binational Partnership

Recent efforts to increase university involvement in addressing community problems and improving the way such problems are conceptualized and addressed have converged in discussions of community service-learning, community-based research, and community–university partnerships. Yet, the intersections among these approaches have not received much attention. This article addresses this gap by describing a multisectoral, binational partnership established to address significant environmental and environmental health issues on the US–Mexico border that includes academic institutions, and within which students play a key role in helping meet partnership goals while at the same time fulfilling their needs and desires for participating in community-based research and community service-learning. The article examines how the partnership has evolved, highlights 4 educational institutions that have been central to the partnership, and illustrates how community-based research and community service-learning have become key mechanisms for engaging people from within and across communities, over many years, in the partnership.