Welcome to Mile Markers, a bimonthly newsletter about rural higher education. I’m Nick Fouriezos, an Open Campus national reporter who grew up at the crossroads of suburban Atlanta and the foothills of Appalachia.

Today’s Roadmap

01: Postcards: A rural focus from Indiana’s flagship

01: Postcards

As mayor of Huntingburg, Ind., Denny Spinner spent most of his time making sure the lights stayed on, the streets got repaired, and the trash was picked up. The bread and butter of small-town governance is most of the job, but it often doesn't leave mayors with much time for dreaming.

That changed when his community of fewer than 7,000 people received state funds to develop a $3 million park downtown.

Suddenly, Spinner found himself with an unexpected challenge: "It was kind of like the dog catching the car," he says with a laugh. "Now that we had it, what were we going to do with it?"

The answer came from an unexpected place: Indiana University's Center for Rural Engagement, which helped Huntingburg envision how to maximize the space. IU faculty and staff helped create a plan for realizing its potential.

Six years later, the park has become a hub of community life, with monthly music festivals and other major events. And Spinner? He still lives in Huntingburg, but now commutes 90 minutes to Bloomington a few days each week to lead IU’s rural center.

His journey mirrors the kind of partnerships he's trying to build across rural Indiana, which he saw much of as the former executive director of the Indiana Office of Community and Rural Affairs from 2020 to 2023.

"The resource Indiana University can be to our rural communities is almost entirely untapped. We can utilize any of the disciplines here at IU. And we'll never run out of students excited about applying their skills in a real-life setting,” Spinner says.

“From health issues to technology, education, business, art, architecture, there are so many resources here for rural communities to tap into.”

The center recently published a report showing that 70% of counties in the Indiana Uplands region had identified health care as a top community need — and the IU School of Nursing has started responding to that need by connecting nurses in training to regional healthcare providers like Southern Indiana Community Health Care.

The flagship university is also helping combat the teacher shortage crisis facing many rural areas, including Frankfort, Ind.

Frankfort is rural enough that students see cornfields outside their classroom windows, yet struggles with competing for teachers due to its relative proximity to two major cities (a half hour south of Lafayette and an hour north of Indianapolis).

"We've had to have teachers covering 60 kids in a classroom," superintendent Matt Rhoda says. "Sometimes we've had to use virtual teachers, with paraprofessionals managing the classroom in person."

The U.S. Department of Labor recently approved IU as a group sponsor for a new Registered Apprenticeship Program, allowing the university to offer a paid apprenticeship to participants in their home school district while they earn their bachelor’s degree and a full state teaching license.

In Frankfort, that’s allowed Rhoda to offer up to $2,200 per semester in tuition plus mentoring support for the six paraprofessionals currently in the program, which just started this semester.

With some growth, the program could significantly help Frankfort address its annual shortage of 20-40 certified teachers.

"We know that if we can get 10 people through this program each year, we'll be able to keep growing our own teaching staff," Rhoda says. "These are people who already know our systems, our programs, our kids most importantly, and have a heart for this community."

The Center for Rural Engagement’s impact is perhaps best illustrated by how it helped transform Huntingburg's approach to its growing Latino community.

When Spinner was mayor of Huntingburg, about a third of residents were Latino, but the city struggled to connect them with resources. A partnership with students from IU's O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs helped create a roadmap that culminated this September with the opening of a critical resource center.

"Today we achieved what other communities with more manpower and more resources have not been able to do," said Evelyn Rivas, board president of the Asociación Latineamericana del Sur de Indiana (ALASI) at the ribbon-cutting. "Today we demonstrate that the diversity we have in our community is not only enriching us, but it is making our community stronger and better."

For Spinner, it’s important that such initiatives adapt to each rural community’s circumstances.

While rural Indiana communities may face similar challenges around housing, healthcare, and education, it’s critical for his academic colleagues to understand that solutions can't be one-size-fits-all.

"If you've been to one small town, you've been to one small town," he says with a chuckle.

"There is a uniqueness to each place. And the strength of rural communities, especially in Indiana, is that there is a deep pride and sense of place."

That pride is what the Center for Rural Engagement tries to tap into through its Sustaining Hoosier Communities program, which adopts one county each year for intensive partnership.

Projects range from downtown revitalization to childcare solutions, historical markers to public libraries — whatever the community identifies as its priorities.

Such encompassing support allows for the kind of aspirational thinking Spinner wished he had more time for as mayor … and now he's helping make it possible for the next generation of rural leaders.

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