The Appalachian Collegiate Research Initiative 2023 cohort wrapped up a busy semester with several deliverables across the four disciplinary groups of Urban Studies, Business, Sustainability, and Political Science students. These four fields of study concern different approaches to community development, but we all agreed on the fundamental principles of endogenous growth and locally-led initiatives for development.

The Sustainability group took a particular focus on secondary education in Fayette County and how it relates to community pride. Picking up where last year’s cohort left off, this group continued to support the “Uniontown Pride” social media account, a campaign run by students from Uniontown High School. This kind of work is important in a social development sense, as fostering discussion about a community in a positive light and promoting local events can contribute to broader trends of local cooperation and optimism. Additionally, they produced a survey for Uniontown residents to get feedback on what people view as the strengths and weaknesses of their community. Finally, the Sustainability students identified a desire among locals for greater support for post-high school career paths other than higher education, such as apprenticeship programs or training in the trades.

The Political Science group focused their efforts on constructing a methodology for focus groups that will enable long-term data to be collected regarding attitudes towards different aspects of development such as local business or political leanings. The focus groups also make room for getting feedback on the presence and actions of the University of Pittsburgh in the area. Of all the deliverables, I think that this is the one I wish I could see implemented immediately. Getting a better grasp on community feelings in this systemic and replicable way will provide an invaluable foundation for future ACRI cohorts, and the reflexive data on local perceptions the university and its work will foster greater manifestations of reciprocity. Generally, I think these focus groups will enable this research project to be more responsive, targeted, and successful as time goes on. If I could wave a magic wand and implement anything produced by this year’s cohort, I would make it so that this focus group methodology had been implemented from year one; having this dataset would have greatly informed this year’s work, and the final product of the initiative would be a record of community sentiments spanning ten years. To analyze the focus group data and see how these sentiments changed or remained the same from the very beginning to the end of the university’s involvement could yield some interesting results concerning university-community partnerships.

This year was the first where students from the Business school participated, so their work was largely foundational and entailed creating the conditions for future successful research in their field. Speaking with local entrepreneurs, they created a draft of possible programming for use in the Fayette County Cultural Trust’s upcoming entrepreneurial center. Aimed at helping locals to start their own business, this programming is intended to be accessible to people with all different levels of experience in technology or finance. The first example of this programming has to do with helping people to establish storefronts on the website Etsy, enabling them to sell their personal crafts on a wider scale.

Emilia, Moses and I, as members of the Urban Studies group, were tasked with refining the asset map that was built up in previous research cohorts. The data we inherited was in desperate need of cleaning, and the usage of Google MyMaps rather than a true GIS software greatly limited the applications of the map. With the help of a full ten-student capstone, we were able to rehabilitate a dataset into a more professional format. This was an unglamorous and arduous task that involved individually checking each asset entry manually. The end result of our cleaning led to 27.3% of the legacy data being removed as duplicates or unverifiable assets. Additionally, we found the existing asset categories to be too vague and undefined to be useful in some cases, and so we set about creating a new methodology for better specificity in future asset mapping. The approach we decided on involves creating new “subcategories” pertaining to specific aspects about an asset, and assigning a boolean value of “1” or “0” based on if that aspect applies. We created five subcategories as a proof of this methodology, ranging in particularity from assets that are broadly considered part of the “cultural ecosystem” to assets that specifically provide transportation. This methodology can be continued ad nauseum by adding new subcategories that enable visualizations of the county through any kind of lens. In the future, a summation of the subcategories that each asset fulfills could identify those assets that serve multiple roles in the community–for example, consider a cafe is simultaneously part of the cultural ecosystem, serves as a social gathering place, and could contribute to the tourism economy. Such a cafe would have a higher sum “score” than a Sheetz location. Using our new refined dataset, we were able to produce numerous visualizations in ArcGIS Pro showing different layers of assets in Fayette County. These visualizations in the future will help different stakeholders to envision Fayette County in new and useful ways.

I hail from Erie County in northwestern Pennsylvania, which is considered to be part of the Appalachian region. Honestly, Erie doesn’t feel very Appalachian; if anything, it is more of a Rust Belt area. Fayette Coutny conformed to my notions of rural Appalachia, though it was a little more urbanized than I expected. Still, the mountainous terrain and isolated coal patch towns were in line with my ideas of the region. The links between Erie and the rest of Appalachia became clear to me in terms of the people: I recognized in the people I spoke with the same sense of being “forgotten,” the same pride and sorrow for a lost industrial heritage, and the same desire to see a restoration of former glory that I grew up around.

In my later life, I would summarize this experience as a chance for me to recenter my reasons for going to school in the first place. Growing up in a depressed, post-industrial town, I was surrounded by wasted potential and decay. I felt helpless to do anything about this, it seemed like my home was doomed to fall into the sea one day. I went into Urban Studies to learn more about the processes that caused this, and how to reverse them. After a few years of undergraduate learning, my experience working with the people of Fayette County helped me to remember that the world outside of the classroom is what really matters.

This course was unique in a number of ways, chief among them being the practical application of our work. Typically, the work done for courses is done only for the purpose of practice or learning, and that work never leaves that setting. This course tasked me with using my skills to do good work that has a positive impact on the outside world, rather than work for work’s sake. Additionally, I have never had to do field work in the way this course expected, and this experience was both novel and illuminating for me. Finally, the student-driven aspect where we were given guidance rather than instruction on how to contribute was unique to this course, and helped me to build my skillsets of cooperation.

Participating in the Appalachian Collegiate Research Initiative has been one of the most fulfilling experiences of my (short) adult career. I expect this opportunity to shape my goals and interests for years to come. I would recommend this experience to any undergraduate student who is even remotely interested in helping a community, learning about how broader economic trends have real-world local effects, or in simply applying their skills outside of an abstract classroom setting.