Paige Kelly and Amanda McMillan-Lequieu awarded grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture
Paige Kelly, assistant professor of rural sociology and demography at Pennsylvania State University, and Amanda McMillan-Lequieu, assistant professor of sociology at Drexel University and the National Association of Counties, were recently awarded a grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture. Worth $590,000, the grant will help fund an ongoing project to survey county governments across the U.S. to better understand the challenges they face in providing services and enacting policies that improve economic growth and well-being in rural communities. This will be the fifth wave of the survey, which was first administered in 2001. For this new phase of the study, the researchers will administer a survey to approximately 3,000 county governments across the country. It will include questions about public services, economic development strategies, public involvement in policymaking and more.