In this roundtable, we will engage the participants in a discussion on various strategies for engaging and partnering with community based organizations and state and federal government offices for research and service learning projects in courses. The discussants will facilitate an exchange among participants on the rewards and challenges of developing, managing, and sustaining such partnerships. For example, we will share ideas on the following themes related to this topic: a) why it’s important to build partnerships; b) importance of volunteering your time to maintain connections; c) principles of collaboration; d) calling on people out of the blue; e) securing letters of support from others for grant application; f) what to do when invited to do consultation or serve as an consultant in a grant; and g) balancing creating an eco-identity with boundaries of such relationships. Finally, the discussants will facilitate a dialogue around how to navigate the mostly competing demands of academia of publishing and securing grants while being a resource for these organizations and state and federal agencies for creating sustainable systems change, which takes time. Discussants include academics who partnered with (1) a state agency on two different research projects focusing on late arriving refugee youth; (2) schools over several years to support services for immigrant and refugee youth; and (3) several community based organizations to offer semester long service learning projects for both undergraduates and graduate students to apply research and evaluation skills. This roundtable will engage participants’ directly in exploring the conference’s theme of “Working the Boundaries”, highlighting how educators and researchers foster alliances with organizations and governments, and work in empowering and self-reflexive ways.