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The Small Business and Technology Development Center &
The University of Missouri Extension:
A Study of Collaboration, Civic Engagement, and Diversity
Brandi L. HolderMaster of Public Administration
Southeast Missouri State University Internship Project
Spring 2016
Committee Members:
Dr. Rick Althaus Dr. James Newman Dr. Steven Hoffman
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter 1: Introduction/Objectives………………………………………………...… 3
Chapter 2: Literature Review………………………………………….…………..... 6
Chapter 3: Internship Journal…………………………………………….…………. 44
Chapter 4: Analysis……………………………………………………………..…….. 48
Chapter 5: Summary & Conclusions ………………………………………….……... 69
References………………………………………………………………………............. 73
Appendix………………………………………………………………………............... 76
Appendix A – University of Missouri Organizational ChartAppendix B – LEAD Participant Observation DocumentAppendix C – SOC Press Release & InvitationAppendix D – LEAD Civic Engagement Network Appendix E – SET Civic Engagement Network
Objectives:
1. Study the organization under the rubric of organizational theory. Examine the collaboration networks that help the organization put theory into practice to accomplish work goals.
2. Analyze the relationship of civic engagement to program success and strategize ways to increase engagement in programs.
3. Analyze the composition of the participants and create strategies to increase diversity or identify impediments to diversity.
Chapter 4: Analysis
Analysis of the Host Organization
This internship represented a qualitative observational study of the host organization, as well as
an analysis of three separate economic and community development programs.
Objective One: Collaboration
The host organization, the SBTDC, is housed within the Extension of the University of
Missouri Columbia campus. The Columbia campus together with the campuses at Rolla, Kansas
City, and St. Louis represent separate entities that make up the central structure of the University
of Missouri system. The structure represents a divisionalized form of Mintzberg's model
(Bolman and Deal 78, 2008). Each campus acts as its own operating structure with a core of
essential workers, middle managers, and support and technical staff that report to a strategic
apex. Each strategic apex reports to an overall strategic apex that governs the university system.
At first glance, it would appear the Extension system operates more closely to a
Professional Bureaucracy form of Mintzberg's model (Bolman and Deal 82, 2008). In this
model, middle management, and support and technical staff are small compared to the essential
workers. In the example of the Extension, the support and technical staff and the management
core are all relatively large which fits more closely with a Machine Bureaucracy form of
Mintzberg's model (Bolman and Deal 81, 2008). It is interesting to note that the core of essential
work is performed by faculty, also called Extension specialists, in field offices, and yet they are
not represented on the MU Extension organizational chart (University of Missouri Extension
2015). The chart (Appendix A) stops with the Regional Leaders (middle managers) who oversee
the specialists (essential workers) and the governing Extension Councils.
The mission of the MU Extension is to provide relevant, science-based research
and resources to the public at large. To accomplish the mission, the MU Extension puts
specialists and staff in regional hubs, or field offices, to serve the specific needs of the service
area. In general, each office has specialists that serve multiple counties. As such, each office has
a different mix of programming but targets areas of economic development, social needs, and
environmental needs. Specialists work with the University and the Extension Councils to guide
programming for the regions. Each specialist has great latitude in program design, partners, and
funding sources to accomplish work goals. This is where the operating structure deviates from
the Machine Bureaucracy model. Due to budget constraints and varying needs of populations in
a given region, specialists evolved into collaborative network arrangements. These networks are
utilized to find funding and meet goals given to them by the "middle management" that is far
removed from the field work.
In this internship, I worked closely with the SBTDC in Jackson Missouri and the MU
Extension’s Community Economic and Entrepreneurial Development (ExCEED) program.
ExCEED is housed at the Columbia campus of the University of Missouri. The purpose of
ExCEED is to create regionally sustainable economic and community development initiatives
through collaboration networks that reach across multiple disciplines, and sectors (University of
Missouri n.d.). As a textbook example of collaboration, the Director, Sharon Gulick, uses
horizontal and vertical web-style networks described by Bolman and Deal (2008) to accomplish
program goals for regional programs. These networks often include MU Extension faculty from
campus and field offices, federal personnel such as the USDA, and state program personnel.
Programs are funded at the federal level and supplemented with Extension funds from the
ExCEED program and local field offices. This type of collaborative effort does not seek to fill in
gaps in service or interstitial spaces as proposed by the Chaskin and Greenberg (2015) work.
Instead, the collaboration is a way of providing University based data and faculty as bridging
structures for community stakeholders. The concept is rooted in the university as the "teacher"
and the stakeholders as the "students." Knowledge is transferred to the student to tackle projects
that will drive economic and community development in the region. This supports the Trencher
et al. (2014) hypothesis that universities are evolving into a fourth mission by utilizing
collaboration with outside actors to create sustainable regional projects. It also marks a
departure from the university mission of simply providing knowledge to one of action
orientation.
Although managing the programs without the horizontal collaboration networks would be
almost impossible, it is not without problems. Specialists and staff involved in the programs are
involved in multiple programs in multiple counties. This created situations where facilitators
were not always able to make it to program meetings. Also, with each actor bringing his or her
part, often the program felt disjointed. There were few opportunities to get the team together
face-to-face to divvy up responsibilities or go over changes in curriculum. Changes and
directions were addressed in conference calls and at lunch meetings right before the program
meetings. The program facilitators worked hard to overcome these difficulties, so they did not
affect participant experience.
Objective Two: Civic Engagement
MU Extension programs have a built-in element of civic engagement due to an
organizational structure that requires a governing body. Elections are held annually to allow
citizens of all backgrounds to hold seats on the Extension councils. Each council member is an
elected official. Extension program information is provided to the council via written and oral
reports during monthly meetings. These typically equate to a laundry list of items read by each
specialist at meetings. The programs are not explained at length to the Council, nor is the council
consulted during the decision to add/drop programs, unless it should require a grant application
that would run funds through the Council. The main responsibilities of council members are to
act in a marketing capacity for Extension and to guide regional programming. Through
attendance at county meetings and regional meetings, I have observed a disconnect in the council
that is felt across councils both at the local and regional level. The council members do not feel
fully informed about what specialists do and in speaking with my supervisor, Richard, the
specialists are not sure how to close that gap. I am curious whether this is due to organizational
leadership or a fact of life for all types of board/council service.
Objective Three: Diversity
Observing the field office where my internship was based, little diversity exists in the
staff. The majority of faculty and staff represent the baby boomer generation. There are more
women than men, and all members are white. This appears to mirror the MU Extension
leadership team, the program directors, and the regional directors. The University of Missouri at
Columbia has recently received bad press over race relations on the campus. I suspect this will
lead to an evaluation of hiring and recruitment processes in the future. However, the picture will
most likely remain the same for now as the Extension system is facing budget cuts and a hiring
freeze due to decreased student enrollments at the campus.
Analysis of Community and Economic Development Programs
The three programs covered by this study are all examples of collaboration, the topic of objective
one. Each program is also analyzed from the perspectives of civic engagement and diversity, the
topics of objectives two and three, respectively.
Strengthening Our Communities (SOC)
The SOC program began in 2012 in Ripley County, Missouri. The program was created
by ExCEED's director, Sharon, as an economic and community development collaboration
effort. Originally, the Ozark Foothills Regional Planning Commission (OFRPC) submitted an
application for a different regional program. The application was denied because there was no
history of the surrounding counties being able to work together and there were other stronger
applications. However, Sharon and Richard, saw potential in the county, so they worked with
the OFRPC to get funding for the program. The SOC program is vastly different from the other
two programs discussed in this paper. The SOC curriculum was created specifically for the
county and is not regional in scope. The curriculum focuses on seven community capitals
thought to be asset builders in communities. The capitals are natural, cultural, human, social,
political, financial and built. The capitals are used to point to strengths, challenges, and key
actors in the county. The director has built in a data portion that is unique to the program. The
data is based on demographic information for the county, such as population characteristics,
employment information, and economic impact factors. Members use this information to
address areas for growth and barriers to success.
Objective Two: Civic Engagement
The SOC program situated in Doniphan, Missouri is designed to bring cross-sector
stakeholders together from all over the county. This includes government, non-profit, business,
and interested citizens. The curriculum is designed to achieve improvements in the county by
utilizing collaboration and the bridging structures discussed by Berardo (2014) to gain access to
knowledge and fiscal resources. At inception, the program was intended to be 12 months in
length but has continued due to high engagement and concrete examples of success. This group
appears to display many of the traits associated with the Civic Index presented by McGrath and
Rubio-Cortez (2012). The traits of participation, networking and community vision and pride
could be contributing factors to the long-term engagement. In addition, the SOC group
maintained close contact between meetings with emails, social media, press coverage, and notes
from the events sent to participants. This commitment to contact appears to be essential to the
buy-in principles of civic engagement discussed in the Griffin (2014) work in Detroit.
At the time I joined the program the SOC group was attempting to move into a
new planning phase designed to reinvigorate the long-term members and attract new members.
On average meetings consist of 15 people, with a core group of around 10-12 people. One of the
biggest challenges they are facing is whether to start another project or dissolve the group. One
of the first challenges I encountered with the group was to help plan a celebration of their past
accomplishments. The idea was given to them by my supervisor as a two-pronged approach to
celebrate the past efforts in a way that would re-energize the group and attract fresh members for
the new planning process. The SOC group was hesitant to plan the event with one participant
asking "what is the point" and another asking if they can just do something "simple". However,
the group did eventually agree that the celebration could be good for community awareness.
During the process we helped them identify people who had been affected by their work and
could provide meaningful commentary during the event. They were given a month to plan and
were able to draw a crowd of almost 60 people from all sectors. I was given the opportunity to
present alongside my supervisor, the director, and several community leaders. The event was a
success. However, as a civic engagement exercise the expectation for new membership fell flat
when the number of participants at subsequent meetings immediately returned to pre-celebration
levels.
The new planning stage, "strategic-doing" is designed to pick a project, assign tasks, and
move quickly through the process. In December of last year the SOC group picked development
of a bedroom community. Other choices proposed included development of downtown
Doniphan, increase economic development, and nurture tourism. At the time the group felt by
developing the community as a bedroom community to Poplar Bluff, the other projects would be
bolstered. In order to go forward with the project the group worked on addressing impediments
of aging housing stock and the absence of dental services. Other issues identified in the area are
lack of hotels, breakfast restaurants, signage, access to broadband, and the need for a 911 system.
In a data presentation given to the group by ExCEED staff, dollar leakages were identified
whereby 60% of the workforce commutes outside the county lines and an estimated 70% of retail
expenditures occur outside the county. The data confirmed community perceptions and the
group continued to develop the idea of the bedroom community.
In April as the group entered the strategic-doing phase there was intense push back on the
project they picked and confusion surrounding the definition of a bedroom community. One of
the local officials displayed a strong stance against the idea of the bedroom community. He
insisted that Doniphan is its own entity, to be completely separate from the retail trade area of
Poplar Bluff. This confirms the Lu (2011) work in rural governance; though the county unit is
ineffective in regional resource management there is extreme resistance to change due to power
structures and entrenched political boundaries. Guided by the new opposition the group
members began to struggle with the close proximity of a metropolitan area, seeing it as
competition for resources and political clout.
One serious problem the SOC group encountered was group fragmentation. A
"newcomer" from an urban area began to attend meetings late last year. She disagreed with a
vocal core member on the direction for the new project. The disagreements were not addressed
within the group, instead the new member formed her own group called Doniphan Vitality. In
March of this year she began recruiting members from the SOC. Another member from the core
SOC felt dissonance was occurring because the group had been "talking a lot at meetings and not
really doing anything". This appears to line up with the Griffin et al (2014) work addressing the
fatigue of an over-planned group that feels like no post-session work is accomplished. I suspect
that talking about strategic doing from October 2015 to April 2016 did not help this feeling. I
mentioned that spending a significant portion of time talking about strategic-doing seems to do a
disservice to its action orientation. At the same time, the leader of Doniphan Vitality began to
circulate a paper about why bedroom communities are bad economic development strategies.
Her thesis is an actual master's thesis rather than a scholarly source, about city administrator's
feelings towards expanding job roles, not bedroom communities. In addition, the document was
written in 2007 based on literature extending back to 1989, well before the recession changed
everything about collaboration and resource management. One of my tasks was to create a brief
of the paper for my supervisor and give a presentation to the SOC group. I was to help them
understand that in essence, they already were a bedroom community, and they need to find ways
to get dollars back into the community. The presentation helped the group re-engage under a
changed project label to "community growth".
In the meanwhile, Doniphan Vitality has opened an office and taken an active stance in
the community and on social media. This confirms one aspect of the Chun et al (2010) work;
although the authors presented the study in terms of government engagement of the citizenry
through the use of web 2.0 technologies, it appears to be applicable to this situation. The leader
has embarked on an aggressive recruitment effort of SOC members through social media and
represents an excellent example of how organizations can use social media to their advantage.
The new leader is using technology and her energy as a new person to activate networks with the
younger folks and key players at the city.
My supervisor asked how I would have handled the fragmented group given the chance,
and I suggested sitting her down with the core member with whom she disagreed. In doing so I
believe she would have seen that he is fatigued in his role and would have been happy to turn the
group over to new leadership. Her efforts, well-meaning or not, stand in stark contrast to the low
energy SOC group. One common rural problem brought to my attention by an ExCEED staff
member occurs with outside job recruitment efforts. When companies bring in outsiders to fill
vacancies the new person is often accompanied by a spouse that is unable to find work. That is
what occurred in Doniphan and the spouse turned her attention to community efforts. By outside
appearances this effort seemed to be easier due to the dense ties between civic organizations and
gathering places discussed in the Whitham (2012) study.
Objective Three: Diversity
Ripley County is not diverse in terms of race. This was reflected in the data presentation
by an ExCEED team member. The county is 97% white, and the program participants mirrored
this statistic with the presence of no minorities at the meetings. Regarding gender and age, the
participants showed more diversity. The core members are of the middle-aged cohort, with
several members of retirement age. There were also young professionals in their 30s. Gender
remained balanced in the meetings, often with more women present than men.
I suspect that there are no (or few) minority-owned businesses in the area. It is an area
characterized by the appearance of deep-seated racism as evidenced by the display of
Confederate flags on many vehicles, homes, and businesses. Drawing on the Swank (2012)
research about minority stress in regions of deeply held traditional values and historical patterns
of racism, no strategies were given to increase the diversity regarding race. However, the group
was reminded that regarding human capital diversity leads to new ways of thinking and group
longevity. The meetings are held in a multi-use building that contains the Chamber of
Commerce, a counseling center, and youth activity center. I believe this lends to the
intergenerational dynamics of the SOC group. One of the older members expressed her
satisfaction that the group worked to recruit young members. I suspect they will continue to
push that effort in the future.
Leaders in Economic Alliance Development (LEAD)
LEAD is an economic and community development program born out of partnerships
between the Southern Rural Development Center (SRDC), Purdue University, USDA Rural
Development (USDA RD), and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA). The
program is based on the seven community capitals and is designed to teach participants how to
partner across political boundaries and sectors to solve regional issues. Participants in the
program have been identified as areas with regional strengths and weakness and those that show
the capacity to work together. Traditionally, applications are submitted via regional planning
commissions. In this case, the OFRPC submitted on behalf of Butler, Ripley, Carter, Reynolds
and Wayne counties. Curriculum for this program is set by Purdue, delivered by Extension and
ExCEED, reported to state personnel, and funded and monitored by the USDA RD.
Objective Two: Civic Engagement
LEAD meetings occur monthly for sessions lasting 4-5 hours. The meetings were held in
a community center in Elsinore. The facility was rundown and often ill-equipped, but
participants did not object; perhaps due to lack of adequate meeting centers in the area. The
LEAD curriculum is organized into four sessions that mirror the New Civic Index categories as
presented by McGrath and Rubio-Cortez (2012). The first teaches participants about the
program, the second is designed to recruit members to a civic forum. The third session, the civic
forum helps flesh out the desired projects in the region, key players, and the pace of the
additional sessions. The fourth and subsequent sessions are designed to foster planning,
leadership, and momentum within the group. On average there were 16 members in attendance at
each session with attendance returning to a low level at the end that matched the low beginning
level. Low attendance could have been due to long program times or lack of clarity for members
that joined later sessions. A suggestion I made to help new people was to create an informational
flyer to help them acclimate to the pace of the program. I thought this might help them feel both
informed and useful to the process.
The purpose of LEAD is not only designed to utilize civic engagement for community
capacity building but to teach civic engagement in preparation for the SET program. This aspect
of program design parallels Downs (2012) idea about the role of the university as the responsible
party in civic literacy. The primary way LEAD accomplishes work is through the use of group
activities and specialist facilitated discussions of university-backed economic and community
development principles. Like SOC, this parallels the research presented by Trencher et al.
(2014) about the emerging role of the university in regionalism.
In addition to the strong role played by the university, the planning commission
(OFRPC) was heavily involved in the project. The OFRPC director, or her assistant, were
present at every meeting and participated to a great degree. The planning commission acted as a
bridge, activating regional networks to allow for access to funds, participants, and knowledge.
Throughout the process, the OFRPC actively recruited members and suggested projects. In fact,
at the last session participants were choosing a project to tackle out of eight choices, and the
OFRPC suggested a different topic. The topic of Workforce Readiness was presented with an
organization on board if it was chosen, and the likelihood of funding for the project. The newly
proposed project was chosen by the group. That led me to question whether the planning
commission knows the region well, or whether they have undue influence over the civic
engagement process through their perceived authority like that of community organizations
discussed in the Chaskin and Greenberg (2015) study.
The group dissonance problem shows up in LEAD due to the participation of the same
two members that were unable to work together in Ripley County. During the March meeting,
there was a tower building group exercise designed to teach the planning process. When my
supervisor split the group for the exercise both members were put in the same group. I noticed
the poor dynamics occurring in the team and pointed it out to the ExCEED director. She made a
suggestion to swap members between the two teams before continuing to the next phase. Once
the swap occurred the group re-engaged in the project and flourished. After the meeting the
leader of Doniphan Vitality called the OFRPC to complain about the core member from the SOC
not listening to the needs of Ripley County. She was asked to work within the framework of the
program even if that meant voicing her opinion at the meetings.
One highlight of the program occurred when a panel of regional stakeholders was asked
to present to the LEAD group. A superintendent and a business leader had a discussion about
unemployment, brain-drain and unmet educational needs in the region. The business leader felt
the youths newly entering the workforce are not well prepared for the jobs at hand. The
superintendent explained that schools often do not know what skills are needed in the area, and
how low levels of funding put them years behind in technology training. This gave the group the
opportunity to create a forum for businesses and schools to form curriculum in a joint effort that
will work to cut down unemployment and young professional brain drain from the area. By
allowing this panel to take place, the program facilitators eased the problem of immediate needs
clouding long-range planning as discussed in Griffin et al. (2014).
Overall, the program facilitators were pleased with the way the Ozark Foothills LEAD
group progressed through the program. This particular group progressed through the sessions
more quickly than other groups across the nation. This appears to be due to the ability of
participants to work across social, economic, and political boundaries as discussed in the Innes et
al. (2011) study about megaregion governance. At the end of the program, the LEAD group
wanted to complete their chosen project and found funding the five-county region. This also set
them apart from other LEAD groups as the program is designed only to teach the civic
engagement process. The group was encouraged to submit an application for SET which is the
third program to be discussed in the next session. At the time of this writing, the LEAD group
did submit an application for SET and is currently being considered by the state team.
Civic engagement networks
An analysis of the civic engagement network formed by the LEAD participants
(Appendix D) shows the members traveling the furthest were those servicing the program. For
the analysis, I used the meeting prior to the civic forum and the last official meeting. There was
almost an equal number of repeat participants as there were participants at the meeting prior to
the civic forum. This gives the appearance of participant commitment. The main cluster of
participants is located in Butler County. This is also the county where the planning commission
is housed. There was no representation from Reynolds County which is the furthest from the
meeting location. This supports the research by Compion (2015) showing that the central EDO
is the strongest collaborator. On average, half of the participants at each meeting represented
multiple counties. These were people that worked for the Workforce Development Board, the
regional planning commission, the Department of Natural Resources, and various non-profit and
private organizations. Many of the actors work together in other projects in the region. This is
true of both participants and facilitators, confirming Berardo's (2014) hypothesis about the
strength of multi-project based network capital configurations.
Objective Three: Diversity
The five county area is not diverse regarding race. This was reflected in the data
presentation by a team member from the University. The counties taken together are 95% white
on average. The program participants mirrored this statistic with the presence of no minorities at
the meetings. Of the five county region, Butler has the highest population of 42,000 people as
compared to the other counties at 13,000 people and below. Butler also has the lowest
percentage of white inhabitants at 90%. If the race characteristics were weighted with the
population density, it is likely that Butler county could have produced some diversity for the
program. Regarding gender and age, the participants showed more diversity. The core members
are of the middle-aged cohort and the young professional group. Gender remained balanced in
the meetings, at times with more women present than men.
I suspect that a lack of diversity in a rural area like the Ozark Foothills is historic.
According to the OFRPC's Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy (CEDS), there is
some truth to this thought. The CEDS plan (Brady and Winters 13, 2013) cites a post-Civil War
economic boom as the region was inundated with settlers and the resultant economic activity.
This activity was occurring parallel to a very active Ku Klux Klan that organized in Missouri at
the same time, taking up residence in Butler and Ripley counties.
When I began work in this program, it was right before the civic forum, session three in
the curriculum. The purpose of the civic forum is to bring a large and diverse set of actors
together to discuss strengths in the region and barriers to success. During the civic forum, the
group identified needs of education and workforce development, regional planning, and
infrastructure development. The group was disappointed that the key players they needed for the
areas identified were not present. The hope was that 40 members would be present, but only 24
came to the civic forum. The responsibility for who showed up to meetings ultimately fell to the
participants, giving them full control over participant selection criteria and possibly giving the
illusion of inclusion as referred to in the McGrath and Rubio-Cortez (2012) study on the Civic
Index.
Stronger Economies Together (SET)
SET is vastly different from LEAD and SOC. The focus of SET is regional like LEAD
but relies heavily on the collaboration between rural and urban areas to address a specific
problem and write a high-quality economic plan in preparation for solving the issue. Participants
accepted to the program produce a plan for how to effectively use a catalog of resources in the
context of regional challenges and demonstrate an ability to work with other counties. The SET
program operates on a smaller scale of the principles Innes et al. (2011) proposed of megaregion
governance. Although the cities and towns are not necessarily "growing together" the SET
partners express the desire to move communities away from thinking about economic
development in isolation from other communities (University of Missouri Extension. n.d.).
Participants learn this process through sessions guided by University of Missouri faculty, and
regional data and industry cluster modeling provided by Purdue University. Participants receive
guidance on writing a high quality regional economic development plan that is used to apply for
USDA funding to complete their chosen project.
Objective Two: Civic Engagement
SET meetings occurred monthly at Mineral Area College in Park Hills for sessions
lasting 4-5 hours. Participants consisted of leaders from all sectors in the four-county region of
Ste. Genevieve, St. Francois, Iron, and Madison counties. The curriculum is organized into five
sessions. The first is an informational meeting designed to drum up participation in the civic
forum. The second is a civic forum to address regional issues, strengths, resources and key
players to utilize in later sessions. The third session is an overview of the regional data; the
fourth is an in-depth industry cluster analysis and planning session. The fifth session is designed
to connect the seven community capitals to the team's individual human capital assets. A sixth
session is required for the writing team to finalize the planning document. The planning process
is expected to take six or seven months, with built in time for the splitting of sessions if needed.
The splitting of sessions occurred within this group and was largely a function of two issues, lack
of clarity in the data, and refusal to embrace the process.
On average there were 20 members in attendance at each session including two outlying
numbers of 37 for the civic forum and 8 for the last session. Low attendance could have been
due to long program times, lack of perceived value in the process, or lack of understanding of the
data. I believe the data had as much to do with attendance as it did with the splitting of the
sessions. The data sessions are designed to educate the region on what industry is present and
where dollars are leaving the area. Participants learn how many establishments are in the region,
how many jobs are in the area, industries experiencing growth and decline as compared to the
nation, and characteristics of the workforce. One of the main issues in the data presentation was
the source of the data. The 2009-2014 data was produced by Purdue University and did not
include a wholesale or retail component, which participants questioned. There was immediate
pushback towards presenters. Participants felt the numbers were incomplete and not
representative of their actual numbers especially in the area of actual jobs. The presenters
challenged the participants on the notion of perception but in the end explained that there might
be some gaps in the data due to the source. I do not think this sat well with many members.
Also, there were several points of confusion in the program due to staff issues including
switching of presenters, changing of curriculum, and no staff meetings before presentations.
There was disruptions to continuity in leadership due to the management of two SET programs at
once.
Civic engagement dropped drastically after the data presentations. The last data session
had 20 people; there were eight people present for the last program session designed to connect
information with the community assets. The eight included a media person and a member of the
regional planning commission, meaning there were only six area leaders engaged in the final
process. The community capital session is so important to the process that the presenters almost
called off the meeting in favor of trying to recruit more people. Participants wanted to go ahead
with the process, so the meeting continued. The low numbers of participants could be attributed
to the programs' violation of the co-creation for sustainability theory discussed by Trencher et al.
(2014). The SET program appears to be paternalistic in approach instead of built on the
foundation of joint cooperation associated with the emergence of the university as the facilitator
of regional collaboration.
The second issue that caused the splitting of sessions was a refusal to embrace the
process. The splitting of the sessions is not inherently wrong; it is expected that it will occur to
some degree. But for it to occur over a three-month span can create conditions rife with fatigue
and burn-out. This leads me to question how much of the problem is with the data and how
much is with participants' unwillingness to accept the numbers and work with them. Also, the
program follows more of a university knowledge transfer pathway than the civic engagement
categories as presented by Mcgrath and Rubio-Cortez (2012) in the New Civic Index. There was
no leadership building, low levels of group participation activities, and no promotion of
community vision. The engagement aspect for actual work with this group was troublesome from
the beginning. In the first session after the civic forum, participants were required to form a
writing team to create an economic development plan based on participation in the sessions.
Putting this team together was so difficult it lead the director to remind them that if they were
unwilling to do this, the whole process should be stopped.
The lack of interest in writing the plan continued throughout the process. I did
not observe anyone on the team taking notes at meetings. Progress reports to the group
contained no information thus accumulating no participant or public buy-in. As they were pushed
for a draft one of the members began to push back with a previous plan that was produced in the
region over five years ago. He circled back to it at each session and asked if it could be re-
written for the SET program. This was a dominant member of the group who mentioned that
when they tried to do this work before it was private and not open to the public. This led the
federal monitor to remind the group that perhaps they were not right for the SET process.
Because most of the participants were associated with government or community leaders in some
capacity, it should go without saying that they have some level of understanding of civic
engagement principles. This leads me to question if more could be done to create buy-in during
the initial stages of the project. The community development project discussed by Griffin et al.
(2014) was obviously much larger in scope. However it seems some of the principles of
engagement, feedback and leadership could be applicable to creating success for the program.
Civic Engagement Networks
An analysis of the civic engagement network formed by the SET participants (Appendix
E) shows the members traveling the furthest were those servicing the program. I was unable to
obtain the sign-in sheet for the last meeting. The analysis presented here contains only the
members present at the meeting before the civic forum. Although it appears that the main cluster
of participants is located in St. Francois County, there is only one participant. Participants were
spread out between Madison, Ste. Genevieve, and Perry counties. Perry County was not part of
the SET program but is the county where the planning commission is housed. Two other EDOs
were involved, and they are located in St. Genevieve County. There was one representative from
Iron County which is the furthest from the meeting location. This supports the research by
Compion (2015) showing that the central EDO is the strongest collaborator. Government
officials were more heavily involved in this program as compared to LEAD. Ten out of the 17
participants in the meeting before the civic forum identified themselves as state or local
government employees. Participants in this program did not work together in any other capacity
confirming Berardo's (2014) hypothesis about weak single project network capital
configurations.
Objective Three: Diversity
The four-county area is not diverse in terms of race. The counties taken together are 95%
white on average, and the program participants mirrored this statistic with the presence of no
minorities at the meetings. Of the four county region, St. François has the highest population at
around 66,000 people as compared to other others at 17,000 people and below. St. François also
has the lowest percentage of white inhabitants at 93%. If the race characteristics were weighted
with the population density, it is likely that St. François County could have produced some
diversity for the program. Regarding gender, the participants give the appearance of diversity.
However, when looking more closely at actual attendance, men outnumbered women in terms of
repeat attendance. Also, several of the women counted on the sign-in sheet were associated with
the program. The presence of women at the meetings dwindled towards the end, with no women
present at the last meeting. There was little diversity regarding age, with most participants
reflecting the middle-aged cohort. Also, this group was more heavily attended by government
officials with local, state, and federal reaches. It is possible that the ages and backgrounds of the
participants reflect the degree of education and professionalism needed to understand the
program as discussed in the STEM pay gap study by Oh and Kim (2013). It also possibly
reflects the study by Chin (2010) about the access of the traditional white male power elite group
to leadership roles. Lastly, SET participation could reflect what McGrath and Rubio-Cortez
(2012) deem the need for inclusion over diversity. Was the drop in participants related to them
not feeling welcome? Or were there some other problems with the program? There is no real
way to know without surveying participants. However, I suspect that the element of
inclusiveness has something to do with the characteristics of the participants.
Appendix A
Appendix D
LEAD Civic Engagement Network
Blue lines: members present before civic forum
Purple lines: members present before civic forum and at last meeting
Red lines: members present at last meeting
Thick lines: member that serve multiple counties
Thin lines: members with ties to one county
Appendix E
SET Civic Engagement Network
Blue lines: members present before civic forum
Thick lines: member that serve multiple counties
Thin lines: members with ties to one county