Welcome to our new blog!
This blog is ECDI's newest forum for promoting economic prosperity and improved quality of life for communities throughout Alabama. Please join us as we explore new possibilties for our communities and economies.
Until recently, the logo tagline for the Alabama Cooperative Extension System was “Your Experts for Life.” Many folks in Alabama Extension were not happy with the slogan and took steps to change it. But that tagline describes pretty well the traditional view of university-citizen relations. That is, we at the university are “experts” who enter a community to solve local problems — extending the knowledge and resources of the university to inform, assist, and educate. Under this traditional approach, universities have a stockpile of projects, programs, and initiatives that can be employed to solve whatever problems (often defined by someone from the university) they find in a community. There is a mostly one-way, producer-consumer relationship. Citizens, and, collectively, their communities, are viewed as customers who need the specialized expertise that only the university can provide. Despite a widespread movement toward a new “engaged” model of university-citizen relations, my guess is that this traditional model probably remains the dominant practice.
Lessons from Uniontown, Alabama
I understand this approach pretty well since I practiced it for many of my years working in outreach leadership positions at Auburn University. But my perspective changed beginning in 1999 when the Economic Development Institute was called to assist a small west Alabama community facing severe economic distress.
Our initial approach in Uniontown was to work through the mayor to help the community create a strategic plan for economic development and redesign a local community development organization. This was nothing new for us. Strategic planning and organizational assistance were among the cache of programs and services we regularly provided to communities throughout our state. But in Uniontown, our project was a complete failure.
The planning process never attracted very much citizen involvement. The few citizens who “participated” tended to be elderly friends of the mayor. They generally took a passive role and appeared reluctant to express their views. They tended to look to the mayor or the outside “experts” from Auburn for answers to community problems. (Of course, what we perceived as apathy might have simply reflected the fact that our customer service approach, which put them on the receiving end of our expertise, gave participants little chance to express their own needs or affect the process used to address them.)
Our planning and organizational assistance project in Uniontown had little impact, because this community needed something more basic than a plan or new organizational structures. Uniontown needed its residents to embrace their role as citizens. We had nothing in our bag of tricks that addressed this problem. So we decided to change our approach.
Humbled by our early stumbles, we decided to take a more passive role that focused on listening, facilitating dialogue, and responding to the needs of Uniontown citizens as they defined them. The results were extraordinary. As members of the Uniontown community discussed local problems, they began to realize their capacity for doing something about them. Talk was turned into action, and these actions led to results. For me, the most intriguing outcome was that more good things seemed to happen as we did less.
Connector and Catalyst
Based on our experiences in Uniontown, we changed our perspective on community outreach. We understand that we don’t have all of the answers. We know that citizens produce and create their own fate. We understand that, like Uniontown, many communities are not really looking for technical assistance, service, or education, but rather how to come together as a community. Expertise and specialized programs do not have much to say about that. Thus, the most fundamental community problems are not amenable to the solutions found within our usual bag of tricks.
Those of us in university outreach will have much more relevance if we substitute the role of “connecter and catalyst” for the role of “expert”. We need to understand that the most intractable community problems must be defined and attacked (if not solved) by the local citizens themselves. They have the innate power and capacity to be the solution to their own problems. Outsiders’ coming in to define and solve problems does not build community capacity or facilitate community ownership of problems. Indeed, it may have the reverse effect of perpetuating a continued feeling of dependency. What communities really need from us is to listen to how they define their needs, to help connect stakeholders with local assets and other resources, and to facilitate community deliberations and interactions.
Engagement, Community, and Economic Prosperity
As an economic development organization, Uniontown was a turning point in our understanding of the link between citizens, community development, and economic prosperity. Everything we say and do now reflects the basic idea that citizens are the community’s most important economic resource; that community vitality is determined by the quantity of leaders in a community and how, individually and collectively, they talk, decide, act, and interact with one another; and that community development lays the foundation for economic prosperity. This contrasts with the prevailing view of economic development dominated by issues of business marketing, financial incentives, and recruitment.
The changes at ECDI are not reflected in new public deliberation or civic engagement programs and initiatives, although we are involved in such activities. The change is a more fundamental transformation of our organizational culture. It is a paradigm shift in how we view the field of economic development and our place in it. Civic engagement is now integrated into each of our programs and activities – whether in education, research, or community outreach.
One manifestation of our change in philosophy is a new emphasis on community leadership. ECDI is now the home of the Alabama Community Leadership Network (ACLN), which connects, and provides resources for, adult and youth community leadership programs throughout Alabama. We see these local leadership programs as having great potential for building more “leaderful” communities, increasing the capacity of citizens to address the challenges they face, and thereby strengthening civic life in communities throughout Alabama. This is the type of civic infrastructure upon which we believe prosperous economies are built.
We have redesigned our education programs to engage the Alabama economic development community in new ways — both in topics addressed and in course format. While we still address the traditional issues related to business recruitment, our focus is heavily oriented toward community development. Course formats are structured to be very interactive, employing deliberative forums, roundtables, and group exercises. This reflects our philosophy that ECDI staff and course instructors do not have a monopoly on good ideas or strategies. Engagement within our courses produces a healthy exchange of perspectives that is far superior to a lecture-only format. We also travel around the state conducting deliberative forums and roundtables on topics related to economic and community development.
Civic Mission versus Measurement and Money
One of the tensions that we have faced is between our commitment to a civic mission and the University’s demand for measurable results and the generation of extramural income. While we embrace accountability and entrepreneurial strategies, the things we value most are sometimes difficult to measure or less amenable to income generation. The economist Stephen Rhodes said, “Politics and public policy are more like love than math.” That sounds about right. We tend to be able to measure the things that are of the least importance. It’s easier to count the number of people who attend a training class than it is to measure the impact of a rekindled sense of civic efficacy among citizens of Uniontown. It’s pretty easy to make money by securing a contract for an economic impact study of a potential plant location. It’s harder to earn money by sparking a community’s interest in public deliberation and civic engagement. But which has the most value? Getting universities to truly align themselves around their civic mission will require finding a workable balance between the university’s civic purpose, on the one hand, and the demand for accountability and funding on the other.
Not “Your Experts for Life”
To summarize, we have learned the limits of our expertise. Nobody knows or cares about a community’s problems like the citizens themselves. And only they have the power and capacity to solve them. For those of us in university outreach, our most useful contribution is probably to serve as “connecter and catalyst” with the goal of increasing the community’s capacity to successfully address problems on its own.
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This article appears in Connections
We’ll dig much deeper into our programs and activities later, but I’ll just start with a brief overview. ECDI was created in June 2006 when the former Auburn University Economic Development Institute (EDI) and the Alabama Cooperative Extension System’s Community Resource Development program joined forces. EDI, created in 1988, had developed a strong emphasis on both community and economic develop-ment, especially rural development, so the restructuring made sense. With the combined resources of Auburn University and Extension, we feel that ECDI is uniquely positioned to provide leadership for our state’s economic and community development.
Our mission is “to promote economic prosperity and improved quality of life for communities throughout Alabama.”
This mission statement guides us in everything we do. Our strategic plan has four primary goals related to: 1) Education and Training, 2) Research and Communication, 3) Engagement and Consultation, and 4) Connections and Partnerships. Here is a thumb-
nail sketch of some things we do.
Education & Training: This year we celebrate the 25th Anniversary of the two-week Intensive Economic Development Training Course. With over 800 alumni, including most Alabama economic developers, this is one of the best basic economic development courses in the country. The Alabama Prosperity Forum is an education program that offers short (1½ day) courses focusing on topics where Alabama economic and community development professionals have asked for more training. Unlike many such courses, the format provides opportunities for maximum participant engagement, including discussion roundtables and deliberative forums. ECDI also administers the AU Graduate Minor in Economic Development, which attaches to Master’s degrees in Agricultural Economics, Business Administration, Community Planning, Economics, Education, Public Administration and Public Policy, and Rural Sociology. ECDI is the home of the Alabama Community Leadership Network (ACLN), which connects, and provides resources for, adult and youth community leadership programs throughout Alabama.
Research & Communication: Our publications on rural issues, including Beyond the Interstate: The Crisis in Rural Alabama and Crossroads and Connections: Strategies for Rural Alabama, have significantly influenced rural development discussions, policies, and programs in Alabama. Our Uniontown research on civic engagement, sponsored by the Kettering Foundation, is used as an education, training, and research tool throughout the nation – and world. The research report has been translated into Spanish for distribution in Latin America. ECDI also publishes the quarterly ACTION newsletter. ECDI has an excellent website, what we believe is the state’s best online resource for economic and community development. Available on our website, our interactive Alabama Economic Development Resource Directory is the state’s most comprehensive resource guide for the economic development community. Additionally, the links page on our website provides the most comprehensive one-stop portal for updated economic and community development websites from Alabama and beyond. Other key features of our website include an interactive calendar featuring Alabama economic and community development opportunities, issue-specific articles and resources, and much more. Please take a look.
Engagement & Consultation: We work with many communities throughout the state. Our goal is to help strengthen the capacity of communities to solve their own problems. We see our role as “listener, connector and catalyst” much more than “expert”. We buy into the philosophy that it’s better to “teach a person to fish . . .” We help with community assessment and asset mapping, leadership development, strategic planning, economic and fiscal impact analysis, and tourism strategies, among other things. We administer the Rural Alabama Initiative, funded by Extension, which, over the last three years, has supported 97 community projects throughout Alabama, many focused on youth and adult leadership and workforce development.
Connections & Partnerships: With a small staff, we know that to have maximum impact, we need to leverage our resources by working with others. So creating connections is central to our way of doing things and our primary message for communities. We are the home of the I-85 Corridor Alliance, a regional partnership of government, civic, business, and educational stakeholders dedicated to promoting innovation, prosperity, and collaboration along Interstate 85 in Alabama. We are founding members of the Alabama Communities of Excellence program (ACE), a public-private partnership that seeks to build the community and economic development capacity of small towns throughout Alabama. I currently serve as president of the ACE Board of Directors. This is a fantastic program and the state’s finest model of collective effort. We are also very active in serving on commissions, task forces, and other economic and community development organizations at the state, regional, and national levels.
ECDI Staff: Effectively carrying out such a wide range of ECDI programming requires a talented staff. Each ECDI staff member contributes across the full range of our programs, but has a primary area of responsibility:
- Amelia Stehouwer (Research and Communication)
- Artie Menefee (Leadership Development)
- Mike Easterwood (Grant and Project Management)
- Tom Chesnutt (Tourism)
- Allyson Martin (Education and the I-85 Corridor Alliance)
- Markie Southerland (Executive Assistant).
This summary description of ECDI provides just a glimpse at who we are and what we do. I look forward to talking more about our programs and staff as we blog along.
Links:
ECDI Website
http://www.auburn.edu/ecdi
Intensive Economic Development Training Course
http://www.auburn.edu/ecdi/intensive_09.html
Alabama Prosperity Forum
http://www.auburn.edu/ecdi/apf.html
Alabama Community Leadership Network
http://www.acln.info
Beyond the Interstate: The Crisis in Rural Alabama
http://www.auburn.edu/ecdi/publications/beyondtheinterstate.pdf
Crossroads and Connections: Strategies for Rural Alabama
http://www.auburn.edu/ecdi/publications/candcsm.pdf
Alabama Economic Development Resource Directory
http://www.auburn.edu/ecdi/resource_directory.htm
Rural Alabama Initiative
http://www.auburn.edu/ecdi/rai.html
I-85 Corridor Alliance
http://www.auburn.edu/outreach/i85corr
Alabama Communities of Excellence (ACE) Program
http://www.alabamacommunitiesofexcellence.org
I admit that I have been skeptical about blogging, but am beginning to warm to the idea. In fact, I’m getting excited about contributing to a discussion about community and economic development in Alabama. I have no shortage of ideas and opinions on this topic and this should be a great venue for engaging readers to test these ideas and to learn from you. Also, there are some great things going on at ECDI that I want to talk about. So I will periodically provide updates about ECDI events and programs and the work of our excellent staff. ECDI staff will be posting here too.
I’m not too sure what people expect from our blog, but I plan to provide information and my opinions on a range of topics. Most will be related to economic development but I warn you that I may sometimes stray and opine on other matters.
I will even talk a little about my family, who have a profound influence on how I see the world. Ella Clare (aka Sweet Pea), my granddaughter, will celebrate her first birthday on April 12. My 13-year-old son, Tucker, is a 7th Grader on the Auburn Jr. High Track Team and recently came in 1st place in the 1600 meters (one mile for my American readers) in a regional meet. Not only is he fast, he is smart, kind, and funny. He takes after his mom (except for the fast part). My wife and I prove the old adage that opposites attract. Lynn is beautiful, outgoing and impulsive. I am quiet, calm, and analytical (and not nearly as good to look at). But what the heck, it works. Lacey Updegraff, my daughter and Sweet Pea’s mom, is 27 and married to my son-in-law John, an advisor for AU College of Liberal Arts. Lacey manages the Lee County Youth for Christ and has a very cool blog of her own at http://fromtheauplains.blogspot.com
Of course, the ideas and opinions that I write in this blog will be from my perspective and may not reflect the point of view of the Alabama economic development community, Auburn University, the Alabama Cooperative Extension System, other ECDI staff members, or any sane person. More later . . .
Joe, Ella Clare, and Tucker
Lynn and Ella Clare
