The purpose of this focus session is to present community outreach projects as opportunities for both community engagement and educational scholarship, resulting in increased quality outreach and service learning programs as well as academic advancement for health professions faculty and students. During this focus session participants will hear from directors of a variety of programs and will be asked to develop structured research questions focused on outreach and service learning events or programs to enhance the quality of their program, and enable dissemination of the work. This session will encourage faculty to recognize community outreach as a scholarly endeavor, and encourage a rigorous approach to understanding effective outreach programs. Using a lens of educational scholarship, quality programs can be built that will provide opportunities and rewards for all participants well into the future.