Economic Development in Rural
Kentucky
Center for Rural Development
Somerset, Kentucky
Mountains give southeastern Kentucky its distinctive beauty, but they can isolate the people who live there from the educational opportunities and other services essential to economic and social development. With new distance-learning tools, however, the people of the economically- ailing region are starting to overcome their isolation.
"Technology offers us the ability to rise above the mountains and to communicate and share ideas," says Hilda Legg, Executive Director of the Center for Rural Development, a comprehensive economic-development center, communications hub, and cultural nexus for 40 rural counties in the region.
Based in Somerset, Kentucky, the center houses a wide array of economic-development institutions, convention facilities that can host groups as large as 2,500 people, and even a theater company. Its communications backbone allows two-way interactive video and document conferencing among four community colleges, as well as links to the outside world.
Higher Education in the Hollows
Using the TIIAP-supported network, the four colleges have been able to assemble enough students to support classes they could not offer individually. And they have been able to draw enough students to justify using full-time faculty for such course offerings instead of having to hire part-time faculty to travel between campuses. In addition, the economies of scale have enabled the University of Kentucky to bring advanced courses to mid-career people living near the four community colleges including classes on education for children with severe disabilities, labor organization and management, medical parasitology, and uses of instructional technology in special education.
Other organizations have also used the network to provide educational services in the region. The Army National Guard has offered classes to members of the reserve on global positioning systems and how to use gas masks; without the center's network, the reservists would have been forced to travel to Fort Knox for the lessons. In addition, the Kentucky Highlands Investment Corp., a nonprofit development organization based in London, Kentucky, offers seminars for small businesses on accounting and financial planning. The Kentucky state attorney general, meanwhile, sponsored a seminar on child and sexual abuse, and the state of Kentucky offered local employers briefings on new insurance regulations.
One-Stop Economic Development
A number of organizations that have opened offices in the center can also use its communications capabilities to reach people who otherwise might not be able to come to Somerset in person. The Small Business Administration runs a "One Stop Capital Shop" that seeks to help business people with their financing needs. The state of Kentucky runs a program to help businesses qualify for government procurement contracts, and another program to provide technical consulting on information systems. The University of Kentucky runs a cooperative extension office which, among other things, has offered computer training for people at the center and the community college sites.
The International Trade Administration, which operates an export-assistance office at the center, helped demonstrate one of the center's most dazzling technological capabilities. When a department official traveled to Argentina on an export-promotion mission, the center established a live link with him, showing how businesses can use teleconferencing technology to develop potential export markets.
Meanwhile, the center seeks to generate tourism through its own convention business, which Legg says has become a money-making venture. The center's theater, known as the Lake Cumberland Performing Arts, has not made money for the center, but it, too, serves a vital function, she argues. The theater helps attract businesses to the region, according to Legg. "If a small business approaches us and is thinking about locating here, it wants to know what our technological capabilities are, what are school system and hospital are like, and what kind of cultural life we have," she explains.
As all of this demonstrates, the center construes its mission broadly. "We take a holistic approach to economic development," says Legg.
Hilda Gay Legg
Executive Director
(606) 677-6000
Source: U.S. Department of Commerce
National Telecommunications and Information Administration
Office of Telecommunications and Information Applications
Last Modified: 18 Dec 97