Urban and Metropolitan Universities: The Transformative Power of Anchor Institutions

Volume 30.1 of Metropolitan Universities journal, Urban and Metropolitan Universities: The Transformative Power of Anchor Institutions, focuses on the role of urban and metropolitan universities as anchor institutions in their community to address long standing inequities. Anchor institutions are nonprofit or public institutions that are rooted in place. These institutions have a mission to serve and are the largest employers and purchaser of goods and services in many communities. Also, they have other assets and capacities that can be leveraged to support reciprocal community development, including local hiring, procurement, and investment practices. Anchor mission strategies involve the entire university, including the business, community partnership, administrative, research and academic divisions.

The Democracy Collaborative, a think-tank, advocacy group and consultancy that works to promote more equitable, sustainable local economies, will serve as guest editor for this issue.

Call for Abstracts

We welcome research, theory-based articles, thought pieces, and case studies for this issue. Manuscripts should provide a critical, evidence-based reflection on anchor initiatives that have been in place long enough to show both positive and negative results as measured through data collection, research and/or evaluation processes. Lessons learned and candid discussion of risk, benefits, pitfalls and effective strategies should be completely described, including factors deemed to be important to any effort to replicate the strategy in another setting.

Focus Areas

We invite authors to focus on a specific topic or topics listed below related to their anchor mission work.

  • Innovative partnerships, including those with multisector anchor institutions and community-based organizations across various geopolitics
  • Infrastructure and resourcing to support anchor mission
  • Alignment of anchor mission with other strategic priorities
  • Integrating anchor mission with core missions of educating the citizenry and developing new knowledge
  • Addressing societal challenges (e.g., systems of oppression, social justice, race and equity)

Abstract Submission Guidelines

We invite submissions of abstracts describing proposed papers for this issue. Submission of abstracts should be prepared in accordance with the MUJ Article Submission and Editorial Guidelines and should be no more than 1000 words.

The deadline for submission of abstracts is March 19, 2018. We expect to complete reviews of abstracts and notify those who are invited to submit full manuscripts by April 20, 2018. Full manuscripts will enter the standard peer review process which will lead to the final determination of acceptance/rejection.

This issue is tentatively scheduled for publication in February 2019.

Please direct any questions regarding this issue to Emily Sladek, esladek@democracycollaboratve.org.