October 23, 2024
A symposium centering around community engagement and applied research will take place Nov. 7–8 at Penn State University Park. The event — titled “Community-University Partnerships for Radical Community Transformation: Co-Creating Agri-Food System Interventions” — is aimed at community organizations, researchers and extension professionals interested in building more collaborative and democratic relationships with one another.
October 15, 2024
Penn State’s CECD's “Stories from the Field” conversation series is returning this fall with two new sessions. Topics will include a youth development program that stemmed from a football field revitalization project and a health clinic that provides care in medically underserved areas.
August 29, 2024
With election day quickly approaching, Cristy Schmidt, CECD applied research educator, collaborated with the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania to develop “Pennsylvania Election Process: A Quick Guide for Citizens,” a package of materials aimed at helping counties inform and engage the public about the election process.
August 2, 2024
The CECD’s Cristy Schmidt was part of a team of Penn State Extension educators who won a 2024 Excellence in Teamwork award from the National Association of Community Development Extension Professionals (NACDEP) for their project, “Partnering to Create PA Municipal Active Transportation Plans.” The team, whose members are John Turack, Neal Fogle, Peter Wulfhorst, Matt Spindler, Er Yu, and Cristy Halerz-Schmidt, was named a national runner-up and Northeast region winner.
May 16, 2024
CECD affiliate faculty member Maria Spencer leads the college's first-of-its-kind graduate summer fellowship pairing Penn State graduate students with industry mentors to help students navigate the transition from academia to careers in industry. Read about graduate student Xialing Zhao's experience working with Sysco to support a food waste reduction initiative aimed at finding new outlets for food that is salvageable but being wasted out of the warehouse.
April 12, 2024
Communities are sustainable and equitable when residents play a meaningful role in the deliberations, discussions, decision-making and implementation of projects or programs affecting them, according to Penn State Extension educators working with Penn State's Center for Economic and Community Development, who will host a webinar addressing community engagement, capacity building and equitable development.
February 8, 2024
October 6, 2023
The “Stories from the Field” conversation series is returning with two fall sessions. Speakers will share stories and lessons learned from programs devoted to farmers’ mental health and workers affected by substance use disorders.
September 27, 2023
Check out the recording from the September 2023 Rural Community Action Assembly. Presenters shared their perspectives on labor shortages, population changes, and inclusive approaches to labor force participation.
August 16, 2023
Watch the recording from our August 2023 Rural Community Action Assembly to learn more about inclusive workforce models.
July 19, 2023
Tune into the recording from our July 2023 Rural Community Action Assembly focused on how rural communities are starting to assess their readiness to get and absorb soon-to-be-released federal funding for broadband infrastructure.
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. View the recording from the Rural Community Action Assembly.
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. View the recording from the Rural Community Action Assembly.
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. Review the recording from the Rural Community Action Assembly.
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.
