Community-Based Research and Evaluation: Participatory models that engage and empower community members and community-based organizations as partners in research activities.

Community Development: Community development is a systematic effort to enhance the organizing, planning, development, and management capacity of community-based organizations and public agencies seeking to improve the overall quality of life in Memphis neighborhoods.

Community Service: Community service is the engagement of students in activities that primarily focus on the service being provided as well as the benefits their service activities have on the recipients. The students receive some benefit by learning more about how their service makes a difference in the lives of the service recipients.

Education Outreach: Linkages and partnerships between University of Memphis and local communities that translate research results into community knowledge, enhance community education, improve K-12 education, and increase opportunities.

Engaged Scholarship: At UofM, this involves projects that: engage faculty members and students in a collaborative and sustained manner with community groups; connects university outreach endeavors with community organizational goals; furthers reciprocal relationships between the university and the community; entails shared authority in the research process from design to implementation; and results in excellence through such products as peer-reviewed publications, peer-reviewed collaborative reports, documentation of impact, and external funding. Engaged Scholarship is based upon mutually beneficial and reciprocal relationships between the university and nearby communities.

Field Education: In field education, students perform the service as a part of a program that is designed primarily to enhance students' understanding of a field of study while also providing substantial emphasis on the service being provided.

Internships and Practicums: Internships and practicums engage students in service activities primarily for the purpose of providing students with hands-on experiences that enhance their learning or understanding of issues related to a particular area of study.

Participatory Action Research: (PAR) brings together all relevant parties to actively examine a problem with the intention to find a solution and cause action toward change. PAR is ideally done by local people, for local people using and applying research designed to address specific issues identified by these same local people. 

Service Learning: Socially responsive, community based educational experiences for university learners.Service learning programs are distinguished from other approaches to experiential education by their intention to equally benefit the provider and the recipient of the service as well as to ensure equal focus on both the service being provided and the learning that is occurring.

Volunteerism: Volunteerism is the engagement of the students in activities where the primary emphasis is on the service being provided and the primary intended beneficiary is clearly the service recipient.