History
The overall critical economic need for Nebraska, especially out-state Nebraska, is to create wealth and employment. Realizing this and beginning in July 2005, leaders from University of Nebraska at Kearney and the region participated in a series of meetings to plan the development of a program that will promote business development and creation of jobs and wealth.
There are many models and strategies available to use but those that struck the group as most pertinent to creation of wealth and employment in Nebraska are those articulated by the Federal Reserve of Kansas City’s Center for the Study of Rural America, the Kearney Area Strategic Plan, the Kearney Comprehensive Plan, the Hometown Competitiveness Initiative, and the ideas articulated by Dr. Richard Florida, author of The Flight of the Creative Class and guest speaker at the University of Nebraska at Omaha during Spring 2006. All of these concepts aim at assisting local entrepreneurs establish and build their businesses (a process called “economic gardening”), rather than focus on recruitment of established external businesses to the region.
As the many discussions occurred over the months, several themes evolved as unaddressed needs within our region:
• the need to communicate available information to the persons who need it and to better understand the needs of entrepreneurs;
• the need to intentionally create situations that produce good jobs, wealth and better life – intentional innovation; and
• the need to identify the special niches of the region (e.g., graphic arts and advertising, industrial distribution, value added agricultural ventures, ecotourism, bio-fuels, ag-related manufacturing).
The group felt strongly that this effort should be housed within UNK.
Therefore, to meet the unaddressed needs, a new center was designed, whose mission is to promote economic development through a partnership with public and private organizations to successfully implement entrepreneurial innovation in out-state Nebraska.
In addition, the College of Business and Technology realized the need for UNK students to experience business in the global setting and initiated an external fund-seeking process and ultimately was awarded a grant from the U.S. Department of Education Title VI B Business and International Education Program (BIE) beginning in July 2007. This 2 year grant, which was extended to a third year, has enabled CRRD to fund many faculty and students on international business study and internship experiences. As a result of these grant funds, a growing number of UNK students now realize that an international experiential learning opportunity is an important component of their educational process. Faculty have taken advantage of international business study tour groups, international research, and teaching due to the financial assistance provided by the BIE grant.
The mission of the Center for Rural Research and Development focuses on entrepreneurship and innovation by empowering the region’s residents to seek avenues of rural economic development through university, community, and global partnerships by building entrepreneurial and professional capacity, and encouraging creative thinking about the economic growth of our region.
The program encourages the target populations of community business persons, and university students and faculty, to effectively engage in local and global business developed from ideas using the resources, intelligence and strong work ethic characteristic of the mid-west population.