Recent media reporting and research suggest that regional comprehensive universities (RCUs) and other postsecondary institutions may play an integral role in the welfare of rural regions, yet empirical research on the regional service of rural postsecondary institutions is limited. The purpose of this study was to examine how a single RCU serves…

Surveyed 1,200 residents of rural North Carolina to examine the effects of gender on feelings of community attachment. Studied the relationship between emotional responses to the community and community attachment. The results, though inconclusive, indicate that community attachment has more importance in explaining women's response to questions…

Engelhard is a very isolated rural community in Hyde County, North Carolina, economically dependent on seafood, small scale agriculture, and logging. In the mid-1980s the agricultural crisis, the decline in seafood landings, and changes in timber industry technology contributed to rising unemployment. Several decades of declining population and…

The Planning Alliance for Community Empowerment, a public-private organization, was formed to address the need for coordinated, efficiently managed social services programs in rapidly growing Henderson County, North Carolina. For small rural towns and counties, planning organizations lead to greater availability of services and efficient…

Questionnaire data from 81 North Carolina communities were analyzed in 1981 to test the hypothesis that 5 institutional subcategories (education, general community services, transportation, agricultural services, and health and sanitation) exhibit the underlying characteristic of unidimensionality and that they reflect comparable levels of…

The Facilitator's Role in Collaborative Rural Development Project began in 1979 as a study of 12 rural development efforts which comprised the North Carolina Rural Employment Laboratory and was expanded in 1980-81 to include rural development in 6 other states (California, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, and Vermont). A wide range of…

Leaders in 446 communities throughout North Carolina answered questionnaires designed to determine the perceived need for trained personnel in their communities. The leaders described the availability of 33 professional/occupational categories as "serious shortage", "minor shortage", "sufficient",…

The first part of this report contains a case study from each of the eight southern states participating in a late 1970s project which focused primarily on the organization of rural counties for making decisions that affect the well-being of county residents. In the second section, the study counties (identified as low income in 1950) are placed…

An analysis of rural population growth and its economic consequences in California, Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Vermont helps explain the changing conditions in rural America and indicates the direction policy should take. Despite their distance from financial centers and their low density, rural areas are generally characterized by a more…

James B. Duke established the Duke Endowment in 1924. This document examines what the Carolinas have accomplished since that time--both through the endowment's investments and otherwise--and what remains to be achieved. The first chapter describes the Carolinas' of the 1920s. While the rest of the nation enjoyed economic prosperity, the rural…

Eleven papers on rural economic development cover challenges and opportunities; employment trends affecting nonmetropolitan areas; status of nonmetropolitan women and minorities; case studies of Vermont, North Carolina, Wisconsin, and California; western urban and regional development; economic development in small cities; and rural policy…