Community-University Engagement via a Boundary Object: The Case of Food Mapping in Columbus, Ohio

Interest continues to increase in respect to developing viable public and highly collaborative scholarship. Yet often community and university partners face significant barriers relating to diverse motivations of individual partners and different desired outcomes. The aim of this manuscript is to contribute to the scholarship on communityuniversity engagement by including the concept of a ‘boundary object’ as a vehicle to drive practice. The boundary object is a shared space, or resource, which may be tangible or abstract, and is co-created by the community and university. The object allows various partners to develop a consensus on the object itself while maintaining individual motivations, outputs, audiences and eventual outcomes. Using this concept to address common pitfalls of community-university engagement, we document the case of the Food Mapping Team, a partnership of faculty, research staff, students and community groups in Central Ohio. Through our analysis, we offer tenets to successful use of boundary objects and general recommendations for public scholarship.