RRD 190 Ripples to Waves: The Rural Community College Initiative to Build New Partnerships in Support of America's Rural Communities

In 1994 the Ford Foundation launched the Rural Community College Initiative as a “national demonstration project to help community colleges in distressed regions move their people and communities toward prosperity. It challenged community colleges to become catalysts for economic development and supported aggressive efforts to increase access to education in rural communities” (MDC 2001). In 2002 Ford invested in an experiment to scale down the financial resources for the RCCI program, but not the expectations of success, and to look at ways of institutionalizing the RCCI process. In this report, we describe the North Central Regional Center for Rural Development’s results of this experiment by identifying the program activities and analyzing the impact of RCCI on colleges and their communities. We also look at the colleges’ progress toward a sustainable model of community engagement and future prospects for RCCI.

RRD 190—From Ripples to Waves: The Rural Community College Initiative to Build New Partnerships in Support of America's Rural Communities is available in READ ONLY and PRINTABLE PDF formats.

From Ripples to Waves: The Rural Community College Initiative to Build New Partnerships in Support of America's Rural Communities, READ ONLY PDF format (1,769 kb)

From Ripples to Waves: The Rural Community College Initiative to Build New Partnerships in Support of America's Rural Communities, PRINTABLE PDF (1,857 kb)

North Central Regional Center for Rural Development
Iowa State University
107 Curtiss Hall
Ames, IA 50011-1050
(515) 294-8321, (515) 294-3180 fax

For questions, comments or concerns about the NCRCRD website, contact khetland@iastate.edu.