ED Now

The U.S. Department of Agriculture last month launched an initiative aimed at boosting economic development in rural and underserved communities through a combination of summits and workshops. The Centers of Community Prosperity will host training summits and capacity-building workshops to help communities engage in a bottom up, locally-driven process to address challenges in their region and foster wealth creation, the agency announced. The effort will convene stakeholders including local, state, federal, and tribal partners, land-grant universities, Hispanic-serving institutions, tribal colleges and universities, historically black colleges and universities, veterans, and youth organizations. The initiative builds on the agency’s ...

More and more, small towns are realizing that one of the best ways to encourage development is with ivory towers. A duo of articles from the Wall Street Journal notes the growing cooperation in town-gown economic development efforts. The advantage of having a nearby college is indisputable, as towns with a land-grant university have lower unemployment and recovered faster from the Great Recession. For example, in 2003, Calloway County, Kentucky’s unemployment rate hit 9.3 percent after a Mattel facility relocated to Mexico. But within a year, a window company moved to Mattel’s former facility, citing nearby Murray State University as a primary reason for its location decision. The business recruits heavily from Murray State ...

Extension universities are valuable community and economic development partners that can assist a variety of EDO functions by extending the accumulated knowledge of academia to communities small and large. More on higher education partnerships will be discussed at a special event during IEDC’s Annual Conference.