By Tricia Seifert, Associate Professor of Adult & Higher Education at Montana State University

Everyone had a story that connected them to rural students. Maybe they were from a rural place themselves, having moved to a bigger community where less sky was in view between buildings and confronting a public transit system with pent up tears and frustration. Or maybe they had stood at the crossroads in a small community during a recruiting trip and saw with fresh eyes how big their campus must feel to students whose town has nine buildings along Main Street.

This was the start to the excellent Rural Student Success Unconference hosted by the University of Georgia, March 19-20, 2021. Higher education leaders, faculty and staff members, college counselors, and college access advocates met virtually to discuss obstacles and opportunities to support rural students’ success.

There was empathy and understanding for students, whose hometowns are often referred to as the middle of ‘nowhere’, that they indeed come from ‘somewhere’ special. It might be in the clarity of the cicadas’ song on a summer night or literally watching the storm come in from across the vast plain. Students from rural communities bring unique experiences and strengths to their postsecondary education. As Dr. Nicholas Hillman from the University of Wisconsin stated in his keynote kicking off the unconference, “Rural areas are often looked at in a deficit-based way and we need to see rural areas as asset-based. Place matters.”

Students’ Strengths

Growing up on a farm or ranch, far from town, rural students often bring an incredible resourcefulness to postsecondary study. They have often perfected how to make do with what is available. Like MacGyver from the 1980s TV show, they have figured out how to use a single tool for three purposes.

Going to a movie (a 100 mile roundtrip drive) may be quite the outing. Amusement and recreation is often what is available at home. The night sky can be pretty awesome television or a large tree and its expansive branches might be the perfect place to climb and imagine new worlds.

Students from rural communities, who have gone away to college (and nearly all have done so because of the paucity of postsecondary options close to home)¹, are leaders in their communities. In a small school, they were involved in sports and music and science fair and FFA. To field a sports team or have a choir, everyone in the school takes part. Rural students are used to getting involved, pitching in, and leading.

Recognizing rural students’ assets, higher education policy makers and leaders need not presume to know what is best for them. Again, Dr. Hillman called out elitist paternalism in his conference keynote address. The opportunity is to ask students directly what would be helpful in supporting their success. This conference tweet from Dr. Matt Newlin says it all.

The conversation might need to be an invitation for students to name and claim the strengths they bring to the college experience. It may continue with students identifying how they leverage their strengths of hard work, resourcefulness, and leadership within their campus community and toward their success.

Community Assets

Extrapolating from the students to their home communities, land grant institutions (like my home university, Montana State) have the opportunity and obligation to build relationships with rural communities that serve relevant community needs, respect ways of knowing and being, and demonstrate reciprocity and responsibility. For a thorough description of the 4Rs, please read the excellent piece by Kirkness & Barnhardt (1991)² and more contemporary articles by Pidgeon (2014)³ and Wimmer (2016)⁴.

The 4Rs (respect, relevance, reciprocity, and responsibility) provide the pillars upon which to meaningfully collaborate and create with indigenous communities (and I believe other communities that historically have been marginalized and colonized). When engagement is grounded in this fashion, it uncenters elite paternalism. Rather, it invites a critical perspective of working with not for the community. It centers the communities’ knowledge and culture, which Dr. Darris Means called higher education leaders to do in his conference keynote. This requires an anti-racist approach to listening to rural communities of color (Black communities across the southern USA, Latino communities from the wide-ranging diaspora, and Indigenous nations), learning from these communities’ experiences, and supporting their leadership toward a community-envisioned future.

This work with communities takes time and commitment. It cannot be fly-by-night or episodic. It requires a long-game view as Dr. Maria Lunes-Torres spoke to in the conference’s closing keynote. Earning the trust of the communities with whom we work takes (and should take) time. Weaving opportunities, like the Rural Student Success Initiative, into the fabric of a community is a process. The goal is that the community recognizes its contribution and the institution’s commitment to the initiative. The long-game view is also evident in the ALL Georgia program, a multi-faceted operational commitment housed in the Division of Academic Enhancement at the University of Georgia.

These initiatives exemplify in words, actions, AND funding what can happen when higher education leaders and stakeholders support rural students and their communities not just today but tomorrow as well.

Opportunities, Resources & Events

Are you interested in how you or your organization can better support rural students and communities? Great works is being done in the rural education front.

Check out the Rural Education and Healthcare Coalition at Columbia University on Facebook. They will be posting links to the symposium taking place on April 1, 2021

You may also wish to register for the Rural Summit hosted by Berea College’s Partners in Education, April 26-30, 2021.

Also, Cultivating Rural Education (edited by Caitlin Howley and Sam Redding) was recently published by IAP.

Do you know of other conferences, books, articles, people to follow on Twitter who focus on rural education issues? Please leave a comment. Let’s crowdsource a compendium of international resources.

References

¹ Hillman, N. W. (2016). Geography of college opportunity: The case of education deserts. American Educational Research Journal, 53(4), 987-1021.

² Kirkness, V. J., & Barnhardt, R. (1991). First Nations and higher education: The four R’s—Respect, relevance, reciprocity, responsibility. Journal of American Indian Education, 1-15.

³ Pidgeon, M. (2014). Moving beyond good intentions: Indigenizing higher education in British Columbia universities through institutional responsibility and accountability. Journal of American Indian Education, 7-28.

⁴ Wimmer, R. J. (2016). The “4 Rs Revisited,” again: Aboriginal education in Canada and implications for leadership in higher education. In Assembling and Governing the Higher Education Institution (pp. 257-270). Palgrave Macmillan, London.