Here is a profile of the University of Arizona's UC:
Target area: The entire state outside of Arizona's two MMAs, Phoenix and Tuscon.
Programs:
- Community Business Matching (CBM) - The UC's primary focus. This program helps "communities to identify new businesses and industries that will thrive in that particular community based on community goals and assets, business benefits and needs, location, desirability, sustainability, land use suitability, employment base, and compatibility with other economic sectors." This process includes community surveys, community presentations and asset mapping as well as other things.
- Direct Marketing and Local Food Production
- Land Use Suitability Assessments
- Entrepreneurial Curricula for Youth
- Targeted Industry Analyses
- Community-Specific Economic & Demographic Data
Progress: It appears they received the award in 2008. According to their website, they have only begun the Community Business Matching program, completing 80 community surveys, two presentations and were slated to begin "asset mapping" for one community in 12/10. The website appears out of date.
How they utilize existing capacity: They piggyback on a national USDA program called the Cooperative Extension Service, a non-formal education program. In AZ, this is an outreach arm of the university and is a statewide network of knowledgeable faculty and staff disseminating research-based knowledge to improve the lives of ordinary folks.
Funding: While this is not absolutely clear to me, it looks like the UC's cooperation with the AZ Extension Service allows them to share the resources of this existing program. The extension service receives some federal, state, county, and University of Arizona funding (predominately county funding after the recession).
Staffing: Three: Project Manager, Co-Project Manager, Graduate Research Assistant. It isn't clear if these are full time, part time, or volunteer staff.
I was piqued by your discussion of the community business matching model, because it seeks to match economic development initiatives with community goals. During our last class, Lore Rosenthal of Greenbelt reiterated that multiple paths to economic development exist, and that practitioners should aim for consistency with an existing community’s vision, strengths and values.
ReplyDeleteIn light of what we have learned about TLED and community development, I wanted to take a critical look at an assessment performed by the by the University of Nevada, Reno Center for Economic Development and the Nevada Cooperative Extension for the Colorado River Region in in 2007 and 2008 (http://www.cabnr.unr.edu/uced/Reports/Technical/07-08-05%20Colorado%20%20River%20Region%20CBM.pdf). The study, funded by the EDA economic adjustment program, intended to help local communities identify potentially viable industries after a Generating Station closed, leading to the loss of almost 300 jobs.
The process (in this case) included the following three components:
1. The University distributed a seven-page questionnaire to local residents regarding their economic development priorities. These questions focused on categories such as economic efficiency, employment opportunity, environmental protection, and quality of life. People were asked to rank the relative importance of each category (e.g. to what extent is environmental protection more important than economic efficiency?)
2. The second piece was a community assets questionnaire completed by “local experts.” To name just a few examples, questions revolved around economic indicators such as the employment multiplier, average wages, share of local revenue spent on environmental protection, income distribution, available land for various uses, infrastructure availability, crime rates, and school quality.
3. Finally, the analysis relied on needs assessments collected from 50 of the fastest growing NAICS industries in the U.S.
The data were then combined into a desirability index (measure of how well an industry meets community goals and priorities) and a compatibility index (measure of how well the assets identified by experts match industry needs). Industries that scored high in both areas were considered to be potential targets.
My main comment on this process is that, while it offers a potential start, it runs the risk of looking backward rather than forward by treating industries and communities as static. In particular I identified the following issues:
• The instrument does not incorporate the principles of strategic doing that lead communities to ask “what *could* we do together?” Last week, Fizzie Haleem stressed the importance of finding a communities’ unique niche.
• The assessment seems to treat the three facets of sustainability --economic viability, environmental sustainability, and social equity --as tradeoffs. While there is some truth to this, we also know that the three can go hand-in-hand.
• The community survey data, which may or may not come from a representative sample,* emphasize overarching values rather than concrete ideas. Additionally, because the questions used complex economic terminology, I question the validity of the responses. I would have envisioned an expanded role for deep local input in the CBM model. Specifically, communities are uniquely positioned to generate creative ideas (see previous blog post http://ursp688v.blogspot.com/2011/02/role-for-cultural-knowledge-in-tled.html), and, as Sclove points out in “Reinventing Technology Assessment: A 21st Century Model”, they can also identify opportunities and assets that go unnoticed by “experts” and anticipate costly repercussions of specific courses of action.
If the UMD-MSU UC chooses to facilitate a business matching model, I would recommend redeveloping this survey instrument –or following it up with qualitative assessments –in order to better promote innovation and asset leveraging.
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*Residents were asked only for their age and gender
Great post and grat comment by Deb. I think we are gaining momentum on sustainable food as a specialized sub-focus area. That's good, but it means that we should probably connect with appropriate folks in the UM ag department and USDA as soon as possible. We need to figure out who those people are.
ReplyDeleteA note on agricultural extensions - this is an old and well established program that is tied in with the mission and founding of land grant universities like UMD. They have traditionally been very effective and a source of lots of innovation and entrepreneurship. My recollection is that Ben and Jerry learned how to make Ice Cream through an ag extension program operated by Penn State.