This past weekend, the ACRI cohort had the opportunity to present our findings to stakeholders of Fayette County. On December 6th, our team ventured out to the Connellsville Canteen within Connellsville, presented our semester-long work, and answered questions regarding our research. This was a truly memorable experience for me and our group in its entirety. This is a project we had been preparing for and developing for a majority of the semester. I am extremely proud of all this group has accomplished and am honored to have been a part of such a fantastic team.
Within our ACRI cohort, we comprise of four teams: Urban Studies, Sustainability, Business, and Political Science. Each team worked on researching a specific asset of Fayette County and prepared deliverables to the community in regard to how to move forward in the future to cultivate these assets. These deliverables will be starting points for future cohorts to work with to help guide them into the research that they will continue in year five of our ten-year commitment with Fayette County. The following are brief summaries of the research we conducted throughout the semester and the deliverables we prepared for the future of Pitt’s ACRI cohort.
The Urban Studies group presented first and focused on tourism within Fayette County. They spoke with multiple owners of famous tourist sites including Laurel Caverns, Fallingwater, Touchstone, Great Allegheny Passage, Go Laurel Highlands, and more. From this, they found some challenges that are currently plaguing the community. The deliverables that they developed in response to these challenges the area is facing include addressing the accommodation shortage, improving tourism infrastructure, and increasing community investment. Essentially, the goal for future cohorts in Urban Studies is to help highlight tourist sites and increase national awareness of these sites to drive in tourists. Additionally, future cohorts should work toward investigating short-term rentals in this region and cultivating community engagement. These goals are vital to increasing economic prosperity to this region and national focus.
The Urban Studies group was then followed by the Sustainability group who worked with the Redevelopment Authority to discuss governmental needs in Uniontown, the largest city in Fayette County. From this, they identified gaps within various departments within Uniontown. They found that there are a lot of departments in Uniontown’s government that needs assistance and that there is a major labor shortage in these areas. They hope to deliver a future business internship to help these departments.
Business’s main deliverable from this presentation is the creation of educational programs to present in the Fayette Entrepreneurship and Education Center with small businesses being their targeted audience. Their focus in this was professional development, social media communication, and job search strategies. In addition to this, they hope to have future cohorts organize job fairs for high school students and recent graduates, organize internships and shadowing opportunities, and promote career development by improving soft skills.
Lastly, the group I worked alongside, the Political Science group. For our semester project, we decided to focus on youth civic engagement within Fayette County. We identified this area of focus while we were looking into public high schools in this county. We sent out a survey to a number of figures in the education system in Fayette County and identified some challenges that public schools were facing. Most issues came from a lack of funding for school. More specifically, a lack of funding for mandates established by local governments. Here, we decided to look further. We noticed that most respondents stated that they have very low trust in their local government and because of this, there often is a low turnout for local elections, especially among new voters. We wanted to find out why younger voters are more avoidant in political engagement. Here, we found that it may be due to a lack of civic education in schools. For our deliverables, we propose future cohorts to look into having guest speakers in schools to inform students of the electoral process and implement voter registration simulations to get students more comfortable with the voting process so when they do come of age, they’ll feel confident to engage. Additionally, in collaboration with Pitt, having more on-site visits may be beneficial for public schools to have since most of their visitors are representatives of out-of-state schools, which are more often than not inaccessible to students in this region. Through our research, we found there is a very small proportion of students at Pitt from Fayette County. We want to help increase these numbers by funding scholarships for students in these regions. Lastly, in the near future, we will be conducting focus groups in Fayette County to get more direct information from residents of the area. The information we’ll learn from these focus groups will be very valuable for future Political Science groups.
If I could wave a wand to automatically implement one of the recommendations we, the Political Science group, provided, I would want to immediately implement increased civic education in public schools. I believe that promoting youth political engagement is essential, especially in developing regions like Fayette County. Promoting civic engagement helps to improve efficacy which in turn promotes democracy. Residents in this region need to have confidence in their impact on their community. There are so many great things about Fayette County and so many areas that can be expanded and worked on. All that’s missing is that community engagement that’s essential in this development. And it all starts with the youth, so that’s where we should be focusing on for developing community engagement.
All groups within our cohort, though we were working on very different areas of Fayette County, have common threads within our research that ties everything together. Our collective research has three main themes: capacity, or ability to plan or manage growth, engagement, and economic growth. None of these goals can be achieved without the others, emphasizing the importance of each of our work. Urban Studies worked on improving community engagement, while also promoting economic development, and building capacity. Sustainability worked primarily on improving capacity to help with future economic growth. Business took all three of these themes with their project. And Political Science focused on community engagement to influence the other factors. Everything in our project works alongside the other and never stands entirely alone. This idea is a good foundation for future cohorts to go off of to remain cohesive in their research. Personally, I feel like that was one of the biggest challenges our group faced this semester. Toward the end, we met very frequently to find these common themes in our research, a challenge that resulted in a great reward since our final presentation ended up establishing a clear, easy to understand goal for stakeholders in Fayette County and for future cohorts to work towards. In addition to this, we now understand on a deeper level how each of our respective and very different areas of study all have a collective goal and mission. In the beginning, I had no idea how my group’s research would coincide with sustainability, but it turns out that our goals were actually very similar.
To speak briefly on my personal experience throughout this project, I found that I really got to grow as both an academic and a person throughout this semester. When I first joined this group, I didn’t know what to expect. I was simply excited to hear that research was being conducted on my hometown. Knowing that there was a whole class dedicated to the study of Fayette County, I knew I had to participate in some capacity. And I don’t regret any minute of it. Of course, we did face many challenges and setbacks, but this was all part of the process. This was absolutely a learning process for me. I learned how to conduct outreach to communities, talk with stakeholders, even how to set up a Qualtrics survey which was a lot harder than expected. However, it was because of these challenges that I now feel much more comfortable existing in the professional field. This is a valuable asset in my future career. Not only do I feel more comfortable as a professional, but I feel more qualified as a researcher. Working alongside fellow researchers and my professors, I got to learn valuable lessons about the research process and how to present this research in a digestible, impactful manner. Our final presentation took many stages of edits before we reached our final product. From this though, I now know how professional presentations should look. The skills I learned throughout this semester are skills that will stick with me in the future and shape me into the person I’ll become in the professional field. I am very grateful to have been given the opportunity to participate in this project and to work alongside my fellow political science researchers.