BILLY SCHUMANN Associate Professor of Appalachian Studies/Director of Center for Appalachian Studies Appalachian State University Phone: (828) 262-4089 Email: schumannwr@appstate.edu How long have you been studying Appalachia? I have been studying Appalachia for about 30 years. First starting back in the late 1980s as an undergraduate student, where I took a couple classes and… Continue Reading Promising trends in Appalachian development
Archive | Experts
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Engaging citizens to discover your town’s purpose
MICHAEL MALONEY Urban Appalachian Community Coalition Phone: 513-531-8799 Email: meamon@aol.com Do you think about the economic prospects of small towns in Appalachia? I do, it’s a concern. Let me make a couple of broad generalizations. The issue for small towns today is ‘what is their reason for existence?’ A leader in northwestern Pennsylvania said, “Mike, we have… Continue Reading Engaging citizens to discover your town’s purpose
Investing in your surrounding area
JERRY MOLES Blue Ridge Plateau Initiative/Grayson LandCare Phone: 540-797-9531 Email: jmoles@igc.org What do you wish that town managers and mayors knew that they don’t know? They’re in rural areas, so the investment can’t be in the small town, it has to be in the surrounding countryside. The nice thing about Appalachia, especially with us here, is… Continue Reading Investing in your surrounding area
Taking pride in a collective Appalachian heritage
GRACE TONEY EDWARDS Professor Emerita, Radford University Founder, Appalachian Regional Studies Center Email: gedwards@radford.edu Were you interested in the economic development of small towns as part of your work? Oh yes, that’s part of our purview. Actually, Appalachian studies is interdisciplinary, so it covers all sorts of areas. My specialty area is literature and… Continue Reading Taking pride in a collective Appalachian heritage
Embracing Appalachian history to build for the future
BARRY WHITTEMORE Lecturer, History University of North Georgia Phone: 706-864-1541 Email: barry.whittemore@ung.edu As you’re watching these times play out right now, are there lessons you think we have not learned from the past? Or that small towns in Appalachia have not learned from the past? We’ve not learned to take care of ourselves. One of the… Continue Reading Embracing Appalachian history to build for the future
Preserving the enviable environment of Appalachia
JOSH KELLY Public Lands Biologist Mountain True Phone: 828-258-8737 Email: josh@mountaintrue.org What do you wish that small town mayors and town managers knew that they don’t know? I think that sometimes in Appalachia we lose sight of how special our region is, and how much what we have is what so many people across the… Continue Reading Preserving the enviable environment of Appalachia
Finding alternative economic development in the hinterlands
CRYSTAL MARSHALL COOK Virginia Tech doctoral student, science and technology studies in society Former outreach coordinator, Appalachian Research Initiative in Environmental Science (ARIES) Phone: 704-978-9404 Email: crystalcookmarshall@gmail.com What is your dissertation focused on? The subject matter is theorizing the rural. I’m specifically looking at economic and community development in areas that are hinterlands—places that are… Continue Reading Finding alternative economic development in the hinterlands
Building resilient economies by meeting local needs
ANTHONY FLACCAVENTO Founder/President SCALE, Inc. Email: flaccavento@ruralscale.com What is it that you do with SCALE, Inc.? SCALE has been around for about seven years. It came as an outgrowth of about 25 years of work, mostly in Appalachia, around trying to build healthy, more diverse economies in the region and other parts of the country.… Continue Reading Building resilient economies by meeting local needs
Building a vibrant community through public spaces
ETHAN KENT Senior Vice President Project for Public Spaces Email: ekent@pps.org What do you talk about when you talk about small towns? We work all over the world, on all different scale communities, on how communities can shape themselves to support their public spaces and how they can make public spaces that fill their… Continue Reading Building a vibrant community through public spaces
Creating agency in small towns
MARGARET STOUT Associate Professor Department of Public Administration, West Virginia University Phone: (304) 293-7978 Email: Margaret.Stout@mail.wvu.edu What do you wish that town managers and mayors knew that they don’t know? I think what I wish that they knew is that we need to start with relations and relational practices. I think we all want… Continue Reading Creating agency in small towns
