As a business major, I was put into a cohort with two other business students. Our main deliverable was to write up professional and educational training programs for the new Entrepreneurial & Educational Center in Connellsville, PA to provide to the community.
Our first step was to do research about the Appalachian Region, specifically Fayette County. We did this through looking at the work from prior semesters, reading scholarly articles, and most importantly, visiting the towns in person and speaking to our stakeholders (town residents). During our visit to Connellsville, Uniontown, and Brownsville, my team members and I took every opportunity we could to speak to these residents – specifically small business owners. We wanted to find out how business owners in the area feel about their past, current, and future business climate as well as the types of training seminars they could see themselves and their community benefitting from.
Our main proposals for the training seminars included: Professional development, financing & accounting for personal and professional use, marketing & advertising, social media utilization, technology basics, non-profit grant writing, and education about Fayette County (to add a little sentimental history).
We feel that these programs in particular add immense value to the community. Having these training seminars in the local Entreprenureal Center would give the community resources to help thrive professionally, make them feel confident in their endeavors, be supported and cared for by their peers, and most importantly, contribute to the overarching issue of “brain drain”. Providing the community with these valuable resources means that they don’t have to go elsewhere in order to feel successful. We hope that Fayette County will one day feel that they have everything they need right there in order to be successful.
My perception of the Appalachian Region and Fayette County has blossomed this semester. Beforehand, I honestly had no idea about these areas. Prior to this semester, the only thing I heard of relating to this project was the Apalachian trail. Little did I know how big of an asset the Appalachian Trail is to the region.
Not only did I get a chance to learn about Fayette County, but through the Appalachian Regional Commission Conference, I also got the chance to learn about the many other counties and small towns in Appalachia. There were more than 10 other schools that presented at the conference, and every school had a different town/county they were focusing on. On top of differing areas, each school focused on a different overarching issue that their chosen area faces. Each group conducted different types of research and made meaningful recommendations. If someone were to ask me questions about Fayette County or about the Appalachian Region at large, I would be able to confidently give an answer – something that I would never have been able to only do a few months ago.
When I am old and grey and my grandchildren come to visit me in my rocking chair, hopefully one day they will ask about my past. When they (for some reason) ask me about the best thing I did in my college career, I will have the chance to tell them about the time I worked on a project that was meant to help people. The benefits were solely for the people in Fayette County, not for me. I finished this project feeling a sense of accomplishment, a sense of self, and inspired to do more projects like this in the future. I now know how it feels to work hard for an important cause without seeing instant gratification or results – and that’s okay! I would encourage my grandchildren to do something where they can feel all of that too. It’s inspiring, motivating and meaningful, and I hope that they can feel something similar to how this project feels to me.
This course was different from any other course I have taken during my time at Pitt. Not only was it a Pass/Fail course, but it was also a 1 credit course. My other classes are 3 credits and I get a letter grade for it at the end of the semester. All the work we were doing for the ACRI project was going towards the people in Fayette County, not towards our transcript. Additionally, we got to go on three trips, two of which we got to stay overnight. The research we were doing was not only on our computers in the library, but also in the environment we were doing work for (Connellsville, Brownsville, Uniontown). Our project was stakeholder-centric, unlike any accounting or marketing class. Lastly, the work we did this semester is used for the next 7 semesters, whereas I usually get rid of the work I’ve done for any other class.
Overall, this was an experience-based learning project that taught me professional skills and knowledge, but more importantly it was a project that did good things for other people. I have loved the opportunity to be a part of this project, and am so proud of the work we have done so far.