The influence of the rural community college initiative on increasing civic capacity in distressed rural communities.

This article discusses the influence of the Rural Community College Initiative (RCCI) on the development of civic capacity in distressed rural communities. RCCI was a demonstration project funded by the Ford Foundation to explore the ways that rural community colleges can act as catalysts for economic and educational opportunity in persistently poor regions. Among other factors, a qualitative assessment of the project conducted by the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) concluded that, although economic and educational progress was hard to measure, there was clear evidence of increased energy for community development. RCCI was distinctive from other community-based initiatives in that it included a nationwide network of institutions and used third-party intervention to facilitate the development of collaboration between college and community rather than relying on the resources of the college alone. Examples from Appalachian colleges participating in the initiative illustrate that this process of intervention and networking resulted in increased confidence in civic involvement by both college staff and community members.

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More and more in rural communities, the people themselves are insisting on becoming part of the decision and planning process that has traditionally formulated economic development policies.

Mary Ann Hinsdale, Helen M. Lewis, and Maxine Waller It Comes From the People: Community Development and Local Theology (p. 2)

The U.S. Department of Agriculture describes persistently poor counties as those with income levels that persist at 200% below that of the national average. The counties served by the 24 rural community colleges discussed in this paper were and are persistently poor. For many, this poverty is due to long term decline in manufacturing, extractive, and agricultural industries. For some, this poverty is a direct result of racism and the relationships among government, industry, and minority populations. In all of these communities, however, something new has happened as a result of local participation in the Rural Community College Initiative (RCCI).

RCCI was originally conceived in 1988 in conversations between the Ford Foundation, MDC, Inc., a nonprofit community development organization experienced in grassroots community development initiatives (MDC), and the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC). These conversations included multiple players within the Ford Foundation bringing together what were then the Education and Rural Poverty divisions of the Ford Foundation into an unprecedented joint project. After researching the potential of community colleges to serve as catalysts in rural areas, the Ford Foundation brought together MDC, Inc. and community college presidents it selected to establish RCCI in 1994 (Eller et al., 2003). Nine colleges from Appalachia, rural South, Southwest, and tribal reservations of the Northern Plains were invited to participate in the initial phase of the initiative. In 1997, fifteen additional colleges were added including colleges from the rural Southeast (Eller et al., 2003). The demonstration phase of the initiative ended in 2001.

RCCI explored how community colleges could serve as catalysts for rural economic and educational opportunity (Rubin, 2001). Under the management of MDC, the colleges made up a national network including communities in Appalachia, rural South, Southwest, and tribal reservations of the Northern Plains. The initiative was based on small grants to the colleges beginning with a planning grant to establish collaborative partnerships and create what participants came to call vision-to-action plans. Participating institutions then received continuation grants each year to support their activities and to allow them to participate in network meetings, facilitated by the ongoing support of MDC. The college teams shared their experiences and were introduced to new knowledge through annual institutes that were hosted by fellow RCCI communities, providing additional exposure to the strengths and weaknesses of other rural regions. MDC also facilitated annual leadership institutes for college presidents and team leaders, which focused on policy development and further support of the individual teams.

This article is based on data collected by the author as part of the American Association of Community Colleges' (AACC) assessment of RCCI in 1999 and 2000 (Eller et al., 2003). This assessment revealed that, on the whole, participating colleges were much more proactive in pursuing external funding and initiating new programs and projects as a result of RCCI. Higher expectations for community development, what Grubb, Badway, Bell, Bragg, and Russman (1997) define as attempts to "create the conditions in which a local community can prosper," (p. 9) were evident in the service areas of the RCCI colleges. Although there were many factors contributing to RCCI's impact on these rural areas, this paper will focus upon the findings of the assessment relative to the importance of third-party intervention and the initiative's fostering of relationships and civic capacity within the Appalachian region and among the colleges there.

Civic capacity is defined here as the creation of social capital that civic action requires (Putnam, 1993). Like other initiatives that focus on community-based programming, RCCI hoped to demonstrate that when colleges and communities work together and combine resources to respond to community issues, they make a difference in their service areas. RCCI was distinctive from other community-based initiatives in that it included a nationwide network of institutions and used third-party intervention to facilitate the development of collaboration between college and community, rather than relying on the resources of the college alone. In this way, RCCI used institutional change and leadership development to increase economic and educational opportunity.

Background: Community and Community Colleges

Community colleges are unique in their service to place as well as to person (Bogue, 1950; Zook, 1946). In 1947, the Truman Commission (President's Commission on Higher Education) formally defined the comprehensive mission of the community college as meeting local educational needs, stating, "Its dominant feature is its intimate relations to the life of the community it serves" (President's Commission on Higher Education, 1947, p. 5). By the 1960s, vocational, or career education, surpassed the transfer function as the primary purpose of community colleges, amplifying the tension for these local institutions to balance multiple roles and intensifying their relationships with businesses (Eaton, 1994). Always considered an institution for the people, community colleges and their potential for other kinds of community service, particularly economic development, also matured. Dale Parnell (1990) articulated this purpose in his forecast for higher education, stating, "One of the key emerging roles for colleges and universities to play in the decade ahead can be pictured in a new kind of economic development" (p. 58).

This new paradigm of development, however, is dependent upon the commitment and cooperative efforts of businesses, community colleges, and universities. Vaughan (as cited in Grubb et al., 1997) also argues, "The community college can and should serve as a catalyst and leader in resolving issues for which the solution is not always educational" (p. 4). An effective response to community needs is found in community-based programming, a framework for collaborative coalition building by community and technical colleges (Boone, 1992). Boone, Pettitt, & Weisman (1998) define a 15-step process in which the community college plays the proactive role of convener, offering expertise in research and analysis, while engaging a broad group of stakeholders in dialogue and ensuing action.

One of the keys to the success of community based programming is "... the presence in the coalition of the skills and abilities to actually create and implement plans of action that move beyond the business-as-usual" (Killacky & Hulse-Killacky, 1997, p. 509). Grubb et al. (1997) remind us, however, that not all institutions are prepared to engage their communities in this way:

   Colleges have responded in various ways to these differing community
   needs. Some have chosen economic development over
   community needs, responding to the greater power of the business
   community. Some are poorly organized or ill prepared to
   take on new roles, and others with weaker reputations are not in
   a good position to serve a convening or coordinating role in their
   communities. (p. 22)

For the persistently poor rural regions served by the RCCI colleges, this is a particularly important point. Rural colleges often have the least resources and the greatest social needs, serving some of the most economically marginalized regions, which makes it difficult for these colleges to respond effectively to educational and economic development priorities in an autonomous way.

Rural regions with persistent poverty are characterized by a history of inequality and outside control of resources. Their economies, based primarily on extraction industries and agriculture, are the last to benefit from economic prosperity and the first to feel the negative effects of economic decline (Carter, 1999). These economic peripheries typically lack institutional networks that can provide institutional thickness, which is the potential for innovative problem solving and entrepreneurial activity (Amin & Thrift, 1994). Rural regions typically have thin institutional thickness due to the economic, political, and social marginalization that often structures educational practice and community life. This lack of institutional thickness can make a region seem sleepy and less open to change or entrepreneurial activity.

Few rural community colleges are in a position either to assess what is needed for sustainable development or to have the community presence to convene multiple stakeholders and move toward actions that may challenge existing norms and practices. Residents of rural communities, especially those who have previously not had a voice in local economic planning, may be unfamiliar or uncomfortable with the organizational skills necessary for effective civic participation. Civic capacity building, therefore, may be hindered, not by a lack of commitment or dedication, but by a lack of skills and knowledge. Nevertheless, rural community colleges are often one of the only institutions in persistently poor rural regions capable of becoming catalysts for development (Eaton, 1981; Sullins & Atwell, 1986).

Civic capacity and institutional thickness can be improved. In a study of rural government organizations in India, Raagma (2001) argues that the professional development of local leaders can increase institutional thickness by increasing the number of effective participants in local planning. Community-based programming and leadership development by community colleges, therefore, may increase institutional thickness by providing important frameworks for participatory knowledge production. Grubb et al. (1997) explain how community colleges are uniquely positioned to play the role of facilitator:

   The special role of community colleges in these efforts is that, in
   many communities, they are visible public institutions that can
   legitimately play the "convening" role, and their existing ties to
   business and industry through their regular programs attest to
   their expertise and reinforce their credibility. (p. 8)

External control and social stratification, however, have often limited participation in rural economic and political conversations (Duncan, 1999; Henton & Melville, 1997). Community colleges can provide a neutral space for the building of local network relationships with the potential to overcome established social relationships, to connect individual organizations to the global economy, and to assist in promoting social justice.

Community colleges are historically tied to the communities they serve; however, their participation as community development organizations varies widely. Community-based programming has proved a successful model for some institutions, but not all institutions have the resources to build and lead community coalitions through processes of strategic planning and action. Rural communities are especially difficult to energize due to the entrenched political and economic structures that contribute to poverty (Carter, 1999; Duncan, 1999). RCCI was created to test the question of whether community colleges can provide the leadership to connect economic development and educational opportunity in persistently poor rural communities that have few other institutional resources.

Assessment Methodology

It is difficult to measure the influence of community colleges on economic development (Grubb et al., 1997; Pennington, Pittman, & Hurley, 2001). Indeed, the effect of the initiative on economic and educational opportunity was difficult to measure. This problem was exacerbated in assessing RCCI because RCCI-generated projects often only indirectly affect enrollments and completion rates, making traditional measures of educational attainment, if available, less useful. Likewise, RCCI-initiated activities could only be shown to affect employment and income levels indirectly, thus making those measures impractical as well for assessment. Neither market-driven nor institutional measures of success were appropriate. Instead, the assessment team focused on the value added by RCCI and how the process affected the ways participants understood their role in improving economic and educational opportunity.

A qualitative assessment was designed to explore how the principles of RCCI were interpreted by the participating colleges, what strategies were perceived as helpful, how the colleges implemented the strategies, what factors influenced the success of that implementation, and what value was attributed to RCCI. Based on the analysis of data generated in response to these questions, the assessment team asked: "In what ways were the Ford Foundation's assumptions confirmed about the relationship between access to higher education and economic development and about the role of community colleges in improving access and economic development in distressed rural communities?" Four researchers, each familiar with one of the four geographic regions as well as postsecondary educational issues, comprised the assessment team. A member of the AACC documentation team familiar with the initiative from its inception and supported by AACC staff led the assessment. (1)

Using a mixed method approach, comparative case studies of 16 of the 24 participating colleges were generated using focused group interviews, one-on-one interviews with key staff and community team members, and participant observation. Participant observation and group interviews with team members from non-case study colleges, MDC staff, and Ford Foundation staff took place at national gatherings of the initiative. All the participating colleges also completed a survey and provided institutional data on student enrollment, grant activity, collaborative agreements, and public relations. Demographic data, including employment, educational achievement, and per capita income for the service areas of the participating colleges, were gathered to provide context to the interviews.

Each case study consisted of two separate visits to the colleges. During these site visits, a member of the assessment team conducted group interviews with RCCI team members, met with the college president and any other staff interested in the initiative, and spent time in the community, including visiting off-campus RCCI related projects. Because of the qualitative nature of the assessment design, geographic expertise on the part of the assessment team was important. In the case of Appalachia, the researcher was familiar with the service areas of the Appalachian colleges from ongoing research on participation in adult education. In addition, previous field work in 3 of the counties included in the service areas of the colleges gave a depth of knowledge about the political, economic, and social structures of the region that would not have been possible from the brief site visits allowed in the assessment design. Similarly, all members of the assessment team brought their professional knowledge of the regions under study to enhance their understanding of the data collected.

The assessment team analyzed the case study data that were generated by each researcher through a series of iterative debriefing sessions following each engagement with the participating colleges. During each session, members of the team reported on their findings, interviewing each other in order to explore fully the data from each of the case study colleges. Preliminary themes were explored further during the second set of visits to the case study colleges and refined further in subsequent debriefings. The themes that emerged from these analytic conversations were also compared with the documentation provided by the colleges and data generated by group interviews with non-case study college team members.

The findings of the assessment team highlighted the value of RCCI in developing local leadership and in increasing the capacity of the colleges to leverage funding for further action in their communities and the importance of third party intervention and networking among the colleges and communities. This article focuses on the last of these as a distinctive characteristic of this initiative relative to other community-based programming models. The examples and quotations in the following section are derived from assessment data collected by the author in the Appalachian region of the initiative.

The RCCI Experience in Appalachia

Located in the poorest regions of the country, four of the RCCI colleges are located deep in the heart of the Appalachian coal fields and a fifth serves the foothills on the western slope of the Cumberland Plateau. The five Appalachian colleges worked independently to put together a team of individuals from both the college and community that would envision locally-based strategies (Eller, Martinez, Pace, Pavel, & Barnett, 1999). The colleges have overlapping service areas covering two sides of the mountainous border between Virginia and Kentucky. Their service areas also overlap with public four-year institutions, private liberal arts colleges, and non-RCCI community colleges. The counties they serve are historically the poorest in the region and fall under the jurisdiction and funding support of the Appalachian Regional Commission.

Energizing Change Agents Within the Community

One of the primary assumptions of RCCI from its inception in the early 1990s was that there were no clear strategies for empowering community colleges to become catalysts; therefore, the colleges would be challenged to identify their own community-based solutions to local needs (MDC, Inc., 2001). Rather than depend upon outside expertise, the colleges were encouraged by MDC to recognize and develop their own strengths and to use technical assistance to support that growth. When asked how their colleges had interpreted the goals of RCCI, team members emphasized the change in the role of their colleges. They talked of the community college becoming a catalyst for new ideas, a friendlier door to resources and opportunities than other organizations and institutions of public planning, and in particular an institution that reaches out and serves. Team members defined their college's participation in RCCI as changing the role of the college in their community. One college that had previously participated only as a training partner in economic development initiated the founding of a community-based loan organization. Another college drew upon the expertise of a community member from its team and partnerships with other postsecondary institutions to initiate a regional development summit. These kinds of activities, while not entirely new, were approached with a new sense of institutional mission as a facilitating presence in the region.

Importantly, when one team member was asked if she too felt that her college was acting as a catalyst for change, she agreed but clarified that the participants themselves had grown. She explained, "We're not change agents. We've been changed by the process ourselves, and now we are ready to share, to remind others of what's possible." In this and in similar comments, participants on the college teams consistently identified their interactions with RCCI's managing partner, MDC, and with the other colleges as significant to their increased confidence in strategic planning. This confidence was exemplified by the presentations of team members at national RCCI meetings, teaching others what they themselves had learned.

Throughout the evolution of the initiative, a fundamental and distinctive component of its structure was the presence of the third-party facilitator. MDC staff and contracted coaches, individuals recruited for their knowledge of the region served by the college and expertise in community development skills, mediated the team-building process by pushing for diversity and inclusiveness. They also facilitated the vision-to-action process, pushing teams to concentrate on long-term planning over short-term project completion. The flexibility inherent in letting each team come to its own community-based solutions for local needs was framed by the principles of social justice and sustainability maintained by MDC's interventions.

The college teams worked to put their ideas into action with the assistance of a technical assistance pool of consultants particularly familiar with rural development issues and often residents themselves of rural regions. The teams were introduced to new ideas through field trips to model programs and gathered together for annual institutes. No two colleges used these intervention strategies in the same way--a challenging scenario for MDC to manage. Some colleges embraced the vision-to-action process; others found it cumbersome. Some colleges used the technical assistance of consultants and MDC coaches, while others did not. Some used the team building process and national institutes to develop their skills, while others used team meetings and institutes to introduce the initiative to new team members.

All of the college teams, with the guidance of MDC, explored the strengths of their community and determined what was needed. They then moved to put their ideas into action using the financial support of the initiative to help. The funding was minimal, approximately $50,000 per college per year, but this was a significant amount in these rural communities. Many colleges used this funding to support personnel so that projects associated with the initiative could be maintained. MDC staff also assisted the colleges in finding ways to institutionalize this funding so that the initiative would be sustainable after the demonstration ended. Thus a snapshot of RCCI at any one moment might reveal, often simultaneously, strategic planning meetings, project activities such as small business loan programs or leadership seminars, or exchanges of personnel and community members from one part of rural America to another.

Feeding Civic Involvement

In some ways team-building processes on each campus and outreach activities like coalition building and leadership programs in the college service areas were ways to reward those already on the fringes of civic involvement. One community member described the team process as "... a way to spiritually 'feed' those people who already give and give as volunteers and community activitists. [RCCI] helps them grow and sustain their energy." These last comments represent a fundamental challenge for most of the communities involved in RCCI; they lack a steady supply of leaders to share the responsibility for public service above and beyond that provided by the government. And, because change comes so slowly in these communities that lack institutional thickness, those individuals who do contribute their time and energy to their community often experience burnout and frustration.

Travel to other regions helped reduce this fatigue and the isolation that community activists in small rural communities often feel. RCCI participants talked about how going to institutes, or on "go see" trips as they called them, worked as a vehicle to channel energy into their home community, including funding, networking, and helping others see what they could do. One team leader talked about how taking community and business leaders on RCCI trips helped build trust. She explained that going to see Tupelo and Chattanooga, two trips organized by MDC out of the RCCI technical assistance pool, "... allowed us the means to establish trust and credibility." By having a real experience to offer new partners rather than just talking about partnerships, she felt that they were able to build real working relationships. Other participants reflected on how sharing both problems and possibilities allowed RCCI members to change the status quo in their area. "We suffer from learned helplessness, RCCI offers bridges to new ideas opening up a 'universe' of possibilities."

Joining a National Movement

The team members talked of how RCCI made them feel part of something larger than one small team at a community college, an experience that helped reduce the isolation they feel as a rural community. They described their trips to Gallup, New Mexico; Danville, Virginia; Meridian, Mississippi; Standing Rock Reservation in the Dakotas; and Whiteville, North Carolina, for RCCI institutes. They talked in particular of how they had worked hard to capture what they called post-trip energy among their teams to drive their own projects. In terms of decision making, all the colleges seemed to feel they were experiencing a new environment of democratic participation in which a diverse set of individuals from both the college and the community were invited to share their perspectives. The ability of the college to act upon those decisions often depended upon the resources and potential of the team leadership, but the feeling of possibility engendered by the team approach was consistent across the colleges.

Not only was the outside intervention and expertise of MDC important, the participating Appalachian colleges quickly came to recognize the value of their colleagues' expertise at the other RCCI colleges. The college teams asked MDC to include more time at national institutes for the exchange of ideas among the colleges rather than prioritizing the authority of experts in economic and community development. Team members from the colleges were tapped as speakers and facilitators, subtly replacing time slots previously filled by outside experts. As a result, networking among the colleges became a source of building civic capacity, one that may have the most promise for sustainability.

The process of moving from externally derived templates for development to local solutions does take time. Most of the college presidents and team leaders described how their initial plans for economic development centered on getting more resources (e.g., money) and more jobs (e.g., small business entrepreneurship). The first projects initiated by RCCI teams in Appalachia, such as small business centers and custom training programs, mostly depended on outside authorities to "help" them achieve success. This approach changed as team leaders, team members, community members, and college staff became aware of the value of community responsibility and the role of the college in assuming that responsibility. Assessment interviews revealed RCCI nonprofit volunteers using the vocabulary of venture capitalists and bankers talking possessively about the arts. RCCI increased civic capacity in the ways that participants changed preconceived notions of their roles in the community. These changes produced innovative solutions that often married economic development and educational opportunities.

Overall, the Appalachian participants in RCCI described a heightened awareness of their potential. The confidence that the coal-miners, teachers, business people, journalists, and college staff showed toward their ability to make a difference was palpable. Again, measuring the success of RCCI in terms of increased economic or educational achievement measures is difficult. Nor is it easy to tease out exactly how RCCI contributed to the success of individual projects that may have had multiple sources of funding. An examination of the RCCI process and interviews with its participants, however, indicates that RCCI did accelerate the learning process both in understanding how to implement new projects and in developing new ways to collaborate and lead within and among their communities. This learning process was enhanced by the national network, a process of discovery shared with colleges across the country as well as over the mountain.

In 2001, participants made it clear, especially for the expansion colleges, that three years of the initiative was not enough time. Even at the pilot colleges, with eight years in the initiative, there were fledgling relationships and nascent skills that needed nurturing. And, as one college faculty member at a pilot college pointed out, "We still have people hungry in our communities. We won't be finished until that isn't true anymore." Although the participating colleges had successfully received federal grants, started development corporations, and initiated a number of collaborative projects, comments like these reinforced the point that RCCI came to mean more to its participants than a project to fix one community need or a grant to fund one kind of service. They described RCCI as movement by the people to use their colleges to build a sustainable future for their communities.

Conclusion

In The Organization of Hope, Baum (1997) explains that successful community organizations build from within, finding their own strengths to create opportunities. Baum also cautions, however, that the dynamics of the multiple players that make up a community's history and culture will shape how it grows. The rural areas served by the RCCI colleges are marked by persistent poverty and a lack of institutional thickness not because they are empty or untouched by modern society but because they are often left out or exploited by extractive industries (Eller, 1982). Political and economic relationships, especially in Appalachian communities, are often deeply entrenched, creating a feeling of powerlessness for those who would like to see improvements. Successful community organizations in rural regions must work to recognize the political, economic, and social dynamics that contribute to persistent poverty if they are to change the status quo. Bringing new people to the table, as one participating college administrator put it, in order to increase civic capacity locally and broadening the conversation nationally by developing networks across rural institutions are ways to change the status quo. Community colleges are in a position to do both if college staff and community members work together to develop the skills and acquire the resources to imagine broad possibilities while nurturing local distinctiveness.

RCCI shares many of the principles of community-based programming, particularly the active involvement of the public and the creation of genuine partnerships (Killacky & Hulse-Killacky, 1997), but it does not assume that the colleges have all the resources they need to be catalysts on their own. Community-based programming is a potentially vital activity for community and technical colleges that serve rural areas. Such activity reflects the entrepreneurial stance described by Grubb et al. (1997) as necessary for sustaining new forms of development in regions that desperately need locally based solutions:

   The entrepreneurial college can provide richer connections to the
   community and to the private sector, keeping the regular college
   up to date with employment trends while the regular college
   continues to provide the educational foundation, the community
   visibility, and the convening function necessary for the
   entrepreneurial college to thrive. (p. 55)

Indeed, the success of the relationships and activities started by RCCI participants may rely on the colleges' ability to continue to be proactive in their nontraditional program areas: workforce development, economic development, and community development. Rural community colleges may be most successful at such endeavors if they collaborate with partners outside their regions that also understand the challenges of rural poverty and recognize the strengths and potential of rural communities. Such partners are likely to be found among other community colleges and nongovernmental organizations.

Since the conclusion of RCCI in 2001, the participating colleges have reorganized as the Rural Community College Alliance, using a similar network structure to RCCI including national conferences. In 2002, the Ford Foundation assisted this transition by providing 4 years of funding to two regional rural development centers to provide some of the external support previously provided by MDC. This new program is also intended to spread RCCI philosophies and practices to additional rural community and tribal colleges. Further research is necessary, however, to determine how sustainable the participatory processes are in these communities and whether a national alliance or regional centers can maintain the support structure previously provided by RCCI.

(1) Lynn Barnett of the American Association of Community Colleges directed RCCI's documentation and assessment activities. Ronald Eller led the assessment team that included Jane Jensen, Rebecca Robbins, Jack Russell, Vasti Torres, and Art Vituro.

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Jane McEldowney Jensen is an Assistant Professor of Educational Policy Studies at the University of Kentucky. [e-mail]