February 8, 2023
Penn State’s “Stories from the Field” conversation series is returning this spring with three new sessions, with speakers sharing lessons for practitioner-academics, insights into how governments and communities can work together to tackle biosecurity threats, and stories that illustrate the importance of trust in vaccination-education efforts.
December 19, 2022
As Cristy Schmidt, Penn State Extension applied research educator, nears the end of her two-year term as the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania’s Extension fellow, the organizations announced a yearlong extension of her fellowship, moving the end date to Dec. 31, 2023.
December 12, 2022
The team discussed how they adapted the Coming Together curriculum for Penn State Extension, the reach and impacts of their work thus far, and their plans for taking it to a wider audience.
November 10, 2022
This article addresses the concept of scale: do we think about resilience as individuals, in communities, or at the city scale? And what happens to our thinking on resilience if we conceive of humans as integrated within the environments and ecologies we inhabit? Thinking about humans as a part of the natural world rather than outside of it (or trying to control it) lends a very different perspective to how we think about and build resilient communities.
November 10, 2022
Yolanda Gonzalez is an Urban Agriculture Specialist with Cornell Cooperative Extension (CCE) based in New York City. She works across NYC to build and support the "layered benefits" urban agriculture. This article highlights some of the work she has done to support network building and knowledge sharing to build more resilient urban food systems in the city, with a focus on collaborative and collective learning among growers and communities.
November 10, 2022
This article focuses on the intersection between community engagement, environmental justice, and educational outreach. Michelle Niedermeier's work over more than twenty years has focused on engaging with communities around environmental health and reducing disparities. She describes her work with the Pennsylvania Sea Grant (PASG) on Environmental Literacy and Workforce Development, and how that relates to her previous work with Pennsylvania Integrated Pest Management (PA-IPM).
November 10, 2022
Join us on November 17th for a conversation with Darren Marhsall, Southern Queensland Landscapes’ pest and community engagement specialist, about his work using community engagement as an essential strategy for feral pig management in Australia.
September 16, 2022
Penn State’s “Stories from the Field” conversation series is returning this fall with three new sessions. Each was designed to bring together academics and practitioners to discuss the challenges and opportunities of applied research and community engagement.
September 9, 2022
The Center for Economic and Community Development invites you to join us for the Fall 2022 “Stories from the Field” conversation series. Join us to hear from and talk with speakers Lara Fowler, Maddy Nyblade, and Darren Marshall about their community engagement and applied research.
July 13, 2022
Capital access and absorption — systemic opportunity combined with the capacity and technical expertise to effectively leverage and deploy funds — are vital components of revitalization for rural communities.
June 22, 2022
Regional workforce models — leveraging cross-sector partnerships, employer-informed job training, upskilling and reskilling, along with community outreach through trusted institutions — are an important component of revitalization for rural communities.
June 8, 2022
Digital equity and inclusion — affordable access to broadband internet, technology and devices, and skills and literacy — are vital components of economic development for rural communities.
March 24, 2022
Members of the CECD team are collaborating with soil scientists and communities in Philadelphia to develop an engaged approach to managing urban soils for safe and healthy urban agriculture.
March 21, 2022
For Dr. Kim Niewolny of Virginia Tech’s Center for Food Systems and Community Transformation, socially and spatially just agricultural systems are born through processes of crossing geographical “divides.”
March 21, 2022
Suzanne Weltman, an educator with Penn State Extension’s Food, Families, and Health unit, sees her role in this complex city system as a facilitator, linking communities to resources that they may not otherwise know about or have access to.
March 21, 2022
This brief article considers the concept of resilience through a social justice lens, asking how and whether resilience promotes socially and spatially just communities and societies that can equitably and effectively serve all people.
January 19, 2022
Hear about several data tools developed to help you engage with your local and regional population, quality of life, economic, and agricultural information.
January 7, 2022
Pennsylvania's labor economy showed resilience throughout the first two decades of the 21st century, with overall modest employment growth and relatively low joblessness by the end of 2019. But certain industry sectors and regions of the state continued along a trend line of job loss in the run-up to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to economists in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences.
January 4, 2022
The Center for Economic and Community Development invites you to join us for the Spring 2022 “Stories from the Field” conversation series. Join us to hear from and talk with speakers Allyson Muth, Walt Whitmer, and Janelle Larson about their community engagement and applied research.
October 20, 2021
Penn State Extension's Master Watershed Steward program works with resident volunteers in rural and urban communities across Pennsylvania to effectively manage watersheds, addressing issues such as stormwater overflow and different sources of pollution.
October 20, 2021
Improved access to nutritious food is one important outcome of urban agriculture; however, working collectively also has important social and economic implications.
October 20, 2021
Welcome to the first issue of the The Urban Resilience Report, a publication of the Center for Economic and Community Development and the Urban Resilience Working Group at Penn State. This report was born of the desire to create a platform to discuss and better understand urban community resilience.
July 15, 2021
This assembly was an examination of the role that equity plays in sustaining entrepreneurial ecosystems, tourism, and revitalization.
June 30, 2021
This assembly examined community capital ecosystems for regional revitalization, with an emphasis on the impact of partnerships between philanthropy, mission-based lenders, and local leaders on quality of life, job and population growth, and attracting external capital to a region.
May 20, 2021
This assembly examined rural workforce demand and supply, talent recruitment, a medical assistant apprenticeship model in Washington state, and community health worker models.
February 18, 2021
Cristy Schmidt, an applied research Extension educator with the CECD, will work with the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania (CCAP) to find opportunities for collaboration. She will focus on areas of secondary data and policy analysis related to county resilience, public finance and broadband expansion, among others.
November 19, 2020
This assembly examined the roles that peer learning networks, intermediaries, and community development finance institutions play in leveraging regional and local tourism for small business development and an equitable rural recovery.
October 15, 2020
This assembly featured an in-depth discussion of cross-sector collaborations among community foundations, community banks, hospitals and health systems, and colleges and universities focused on leveraging local assets to make investments into small businesses, broadband infrastructure, and other economic development projects.
September 24, 2020
This assembly explores the job training needs in the state's rural communities and how job training can be an investment in an equitable recovery.
January 15, 2020
If not contained, the spotted lanternfly potentially could drain Pennsylvania's economy of at least $324 million annually and cause the loss of about 2,800 jobs, according to a study carried out by economists in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences.
