Our trip to Washington DC last week was incredibly informative and meaningful. The opportunity to take the work we had been doing around Fayette County and put it in conversation with projects from across the entire Appalachian region was the perfect culminating experience. Our presentation itself had been tightened up and polished a lot between Connellsville and DC, with our messaging only becoming clearer the more we practiced and gave each other feedback. 

The biggest way our Washington DC presentation experience differed from our experience at the Connellsville Canteen was that we had the opportunity to experience the broader Appalachian context our work fit into. Getting to see the ACRI through the lens of architecture students, healthcare accessibility advocates, scientists, and more allowed me to see just how all-encompassing this project is, and how important it is to build a team of people across disciplines in order to create positive, effective change. It was also really interesting to see which schools had been working with similar themes and goals to us, and which schools had taken completely different approaches. 

Many groups talked about some form of resilience, which made me realize just how many ways resilience can be built. Our group approached it from an industrial standpoint, highlighting the fact that connecting people to job opportunities within their own towns, and using people’s own talents to create opportunities, is a huge way places can become economically resilient. There was another group from Virginia Tech who focused on recovery following a major flood in the New River Valley. This was a form of environmental resilience, offering us a completely new approach to goals shared across the universities. Our group had also spent time talking about the Great Allegheny Passage (GAP) Trail and access to the natural beauty within Fayette County, which we also saw parallels to across other presentations. The University of Tennessee presented on outdoor recreation in the gorgeous scenery of Bold River Falls and Tellico Lake and how it can be used to lift areas out of poverty. 

I was fascinated to watch a group of architecture students display renderings of an updated town hall and park from a downtown redesign project they’d been working on. Their designs so clearly captured the essence of the town they had gathered from town halls and community feedback, yet they were still modern and forward thinking. They reinvented previously unusual parkspace, creating new recreation space as well. Another favorite presentation of mine was the Indiana University of Pennsylvania project on obstetric and pediatric care in northern Appalachia. This one resonated with me because their focus was on Indiana County, Pennsylvania, only two counties away from Allegheny County, which is home to the University of Pittsburgh and its vast network of hospitals and healthcare facilities. It was a very eye-opening experience for me to see how places only two counties away from each other can have such significant disparities in healthcare access and support.  

I learned a lot about the ways maternal health, food insecurity, and climate change are all connected, and how sending resources toward one of these causes creates a positive ripple effect for them all. Throughout my own class at Pitt, I learned about the poverty and challenges of Appalachia primarily through an urban studies lens, which meant talking a lot about the loss of industry and how that’s impacted towns particularly in the northern Appalachian region. I’d spent much of the semester learning about the importance of improving road infrastructure and broadband access so that people in places like Fayette County can be connected to work opportunities wherever they are, as well as benefit from the resources of bigger cities without having to relocate. It wasn’t until DC, however, that I was able to fully recognize the diversity of geographies, economic landscapes, and other challenges existing across Appalachia. I had no idea how significant the existence of museums and architecture was in these kinds of development efforts. I also learned about the expanding role of AI and technology in the growth of small businesses, helping me envision the future of Appalachia in new ways. 

When I look back on this entire experience in the future, I’ll think about how a sticker is more than just a sticker—it’s an opportunity. If we had only wanted to create a small design that tourists could stick to their water bottles to remember Connellsville, we could have easily had something drawn up and printed on our own campus. We could’ve mailed them to the Connellsville Canteen and had someone distribute them at storefronts and trail head shelters. It would’ve accomplished our initial goal of spreading regional awareness of the area. So why go all the way to Connellsville? Why recruit local artists to make the designs? Why use designs created specifically by young students? Why print them in a Connellsville print shop? Every step was intentional. It was crucial that we travel to Connellsville (on more than one occasion) so we could understand the town, and by extension, the people, on a more personal level. We had to be able to picture the way different businesses work together and the ways visual art and culture shape the town’s identity. We had to work with local artists because they know how to represent the assets of Connellsville better than anyone. We had to encourage younger artists to participate because the future depends on the next generation of people to represent their town strongly and continue to bring beauty to the area for years to come. We had to print at The Ink Spot because, just like every prior aspect of this project, it’s crucial to work with local arts-based small businesses every step of the way to ensure the outcome authentically represents what Connellsville is all about and remains a continued investment in the area’s growth.

Though there have been overlapping lessons, this course has differed from many of my other classes in both experiential learning and content. This was the most hands-on class I’ve taken in all four years of college, with field trips dedicated not only to learning about Connellsville, but building long term relationships with stakeholders, small business owners, and visionaries working to continue their communities’ path toward resilience. It was the things I’ve read that provided context, but it was the things I’ve seen that will make this class inform the work that I do for my entire career. The content itself also differed from many of my other urban studies classes, specifically because it gave new meaning to the word urban. Most urban studies classes use larger cities as frames of reference to understand more complex infrastructure, planning, and systems. We don’t spend nearly as much time talking about the ways rural and urban environments interact with each other. This class put these two ends of the urban spectrum in conversation with each other—and showed the value of everything in between.