This series of blog posts widens the focus on the impacts automation will have on overall employment in in Greater Minnesota, and in particular, West Central Minnesota. Part two explores the potential impact in more detail by comparing the amount of jobs across the key job sectors in the West Central region to employment in sectors in Minnesota as a whole.

When we travel around to different regions of the state, we commonly hear: “we have jobs, we just don’t have workers.” The lack of workers to fill vacancies is a big enough problem to non-profits and government agencies that many have begun prioritizing this issue and are developing programs to help alleviate and solve this problem.

Rocherno de Jongh, a UMM junior, has worked with CST on rural data projects for the last 2 years and has learned just how complicated rural data are. With Kelly Asche and Rebecca Haider, he will explore one of the fundamental topics surrounding rural data: what does it mean to be “rural”?

Kelly Asche (Center for Small Towns), Michele Anderson (Springboard for the Arts) and Courtney Bergey (Community and Economic Development Associates) reflect on why rural community and economic development leaders looking for new inspiration and tools for their communities will not want to miss the 2017 Rural Arts and Culture Summit at the University of Minnesota, Morris.

How did your hometown become the place it is today? And how will it continue to change to keep up with the modern world?

Lauren Solkowski is a first year student at the University of Minnesota, Morris, and student worker at CST. In this post, she reflects on her experience of moving to a small town in rural Minnesota, as well as the history of the area that she learned via her project with CST.

This post contains the results of a report by UMM Professor Cristina Ortiz and UMM alum Natalie Hoidal, which includes information from a focus group conducted by Natalie Hoidal and interviews with a group of Latina mothers.

Center for Small Towns is beginning a series of projects on rural housing, in response to the great amount of interest and enthusiasm on the topic around western Minnesota recently. One topic of focus for this project was the nature of housing studies in rural Minnesota- how do they work and how useful are they for communities?