“We came home to Vermont:” RISE Summit Explores Solutions for Rural Challenges

Last year, the University of Vermont'sinaugural Research, Innovation, Sustainability, and Entrepreneurship (RISE) Summitbrought together leaders, creators, and educators to explore the limitless potential for cooperation within a broad community of motivated individuals and organizations. Year two of RISE focused on a definitive direction for that unified energy - how the region's strong, resilient communities can connect with researchers, educators, entrepreneurs and students to help shape a better tomorrow.

Upward of 900 people from the four corners of Vermont and beyond converged on the UVM's Dudley H. Davis Center on Monday and Tuesday of this week to explore the value of partnership at the second annualRISE summit. This year's theme, "Partners in Place," attracted a wide spectrum of professionals inspired to share their experiences in joining forces with local government, schools, businesses, and other community elements to harness the power of creative problem-solving.

"This year's RISE summit took a careful look at the challenges of the past and present and showed there is great reason to have hope and optimism for the future," UVM President Suresh Garimella said. "The efforts our speakers discussed are already making a significant impact in many places, and with the added fuel of ideas and innovation discussed at RISE, they can drive solutions for tomorrow's world."

The RISE stage was graced with a world-class roster of leaders and researchers with an expansive collection of experiences. Special guests of the summit included USDA Under Secretary for Research, Education, and Economics Dr. Chavonda Jacobs-Young, U.S. Senator Peter Welch, retired U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy, and representatives from UVM's National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) consortium partners Auburn University and the University of Wisconsin.

RISE 2024 was coordinated by UVM'sLeahy Institute for Rural Partnerships, launched last year to provide engagement opportunities and cooperation with UVM for the benefit of rural places across the state and region. Patricia Coates, director of the Leahy Institute and the UVM Office of Engagement, noted the importance of the Institute's role as a convenor - offering citizens and professionals the opportunity to come together to share ideas and success stories.

"In planning for RISE, we asked ourselves: what is it about a place that inspires people to be innovative? How can we set up places where our makers, artists, creators, innovators can make their magic?" Coates said. "So, we decided to invite some of the most creative and innovative people we could think of to talk about it."

The resulting conversations often sounded like in-the-moment brainstorming sessions as academics, community leaders, non-profit directors, artists and business owners engaged in freewheeling discussion, leavened by questions and reflections from audience members.

While the conversations were reflective and soul-searching, the proceedings kept one eye focused squarely on real possibilities for Vermont's future. Coates announced that theLeahy Institute had officially opened its second round of grants to fund partnerships, with awards to be announced this December.

Seeds of Change

Many of the same themes emerged repeatedly during the conference: the need for affordable housing, transportation and technological infrastructure to drive economic development in Vermont, with an emphasis on building from the ground up, at the community level. Panelists returned to the need to respect a community's culture and draw from its unique strengths to meet its challenges.

Panelists noted that their work was helpful to communities when the effort grew out of the community itself: its people, history and culture. Whether revitalizing a shuttered downtown or providing upskilling opportunities for emerging careers, the solutions always lay in honoring the communities where the work was happening.

"It's not easy work, and we shouldn't sugarcoat it, but it is important to believe that it's possible," said Tony Pipa, senior fellow in the Brookings Institution's Center for Sustainable Development and host of the podcast, Reimagine Rural, in the first day's keynote address. "We try to focus on what a particular community wants, instead of what it doesn't have."

Pipa and Tuesday's keynote speaker, Jacobs-Young, brought a wider national lens to the discussions about rural development efforts.

"We're working toward a specific vision for the future of agriculture, which I think is provocative for your discussion here at RISE on placemaking," said Jacobs-Young, as she outlined the work USDA is doing on behalf of rural communities in her address, 'Science to Shape the Future of Our Places.' "We can't afford to work in vacuums. We can't afford to start without the end in mind. We have a world to feed - and they're depending on us."

No Place Like Home

On Tuesday afternoon, Sen. Leahy addressed the audience and shared his love for his native state, to which he gladly returned following a long and storied career in the U.S. Senate: "When Marcelle and I came home, we came home to Vermont," he said during remarks before presenting the first annual Leahy Institute Distinguished Community Engagement Award to Gwen Kozlowski, urban and community forest coordinator of the UVM Extension Service.

The award is given annually to a UVM faculty or staff member recognizing their outstanding work in engaging with Vermont communities. Kozlowski has led partnerships with community-based organizations in over ten Vermont municipalities. She coordinated the Community Canopy program, which to date has given away 5,000 trees to more than 4,000 Vermont residents and, In partnership with the Department of Libraries, distributed Arbor Day Celebration kits to 1,950 teachers, students, and community members.

The summit delivered on the theme of placemaking in Vermont, with presentations featuring local speakers and panelists. Many of the panels underscored a key aims of the Leahy Institute and the university at large: connecting research and resources at UVM with communities engaged in the challenging work of making their places better.

"Research universities like this one-with our technological, analytical and creative capacities - can be essential in helping to make our places healthy, prosperous, and purposeful," Coates said.

A Wealth of Expertise

The "Our Places, Our Community Schools" panel presented a research collaboration between UVM faculty in the College of Education and Social Services, officials from the Vermont Department of Education, and leaders of six local school districts. As part of a research partnership funded through the Leahy Institute, the collaborative team is providing research and evaluation into the work of re-envisioning schools as resource hubs designed to provide support and services that help all students and families in the community to thrive.

A panel titled "Placemaking Tools: Maps, Drones and Data" facilitated by Chris Campany, executive director of the Windham Regional Planning Commission, explored ways organizations like the Vermont Community Foundation, the Vermont Research Open Source Office and the UVM Spatial Analysis Lab are using technology and analysis to bolster community resilience. Paige Brochu, interim director of UVM Spatial Analysis Lab (SAL), described how SAL teamed with Vermont rescue workers and aid organizations to provided drone imaging that helped accelerate FEMA funding to affected areas of the state.

The final session of the conference, a conversation among community leaders from three Northeast Kingdom towns, moderated by UVM Extension professor of Agricultural Engineering Chris Callahan, was recorded as the first episode of a new Leahy Institute podcast "Partners in Place." Callahan said the podcast would be a new method for continuing the conversation about placemaking in Vermont-a conversation among neighbors, now available for the rest of Vermont, and the world, to hear.

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