Alumni Magazine-Winter 2020

Page 23

the drive to discover

Ball State researchers strive to reveal the past and shape the future

Small Town Big Data

By Marc Ransford, ’83 MA ’07

Emily Wornell seeks remedies for poverty in rural communities.

E

mily Wornell knows about small town life. She grew up in Harrisburg, Oregon — a quaint, historic river town of some 1,500 residents. Nights were quiet. People were welcoming. There wasn’t even a stoplight. “Towns like Harrisburg are still what is America is all about,” said Wornell, a research assistant professor in the Indiana Communities Institute at Ball State’s Miller College of Business. “Rural America is an important part of not just our history but our future. It’s where the vast majority of our food is grown and where our natural resources are managed. There’s a lot of important cultural significance to rural places.” Wornell left Harrisburg but never forgot her small town roots. At Pennsylvania State University, her doctoral studies included rural sociology. With Ball State’s location in the heartland, it seemed the ideal location to continue her work, applying her research expertise to better understand the struggles of low-income rural households. In recent treks across Indiana, Wornell found that small towns may look the same as they did decades ago, but change has come. The town squares are still there, but many shops have left. People are still welcoming, but their friendly faces are often lined with worry. “We see a lot of deep and persistent poverty in rural communities,” she said. “In fact, the vast majority of rural communities has a large group of poor residents. These have existed for generations.”

With her background growing up in a one-stoplight town and her training in rural economics, Emily Wornell conducts research in Selma, Indiana, and other small communities to discover ways to make life better for struggling families.

Photo by Bobby Ellis

42

Ball State University Alumni Magazine

Making ends meet Wornell recently received a federal grant to lead a four-year, multiuniversity team that will study how low-income Hoosier families manage to make ends meet in several economically distressed communities — and to come up with policy recommendations to improve their lives. “We are going to look at how these families manage to subsist and eke out a living in order to know how best to assist them,” she said. “We have to factor in the community programs, such as food banks and similar organizations, which may or may not be of help. We also need to examine how family members assist each other by providing food, employment, and other types of assistance.”

For her research, she will embed herself in three small, rural communities in Indiana, writing a case study from one-on-one and group interviews. “There has been a population shift from rural areas to urban communities for over a century now,” Wornell said. “Young people are moving to cities to look for work and opportunities. “But there are good reasons why people don’t leave their hometowns. They have family and friends who assist. Many simply cannot afford to leave those networks behind.” At the same time, Wornell reports that Indiana’s rural communities have become a new immigrant destination. Populations of towns that were once overwhelmingly older and white have become increasingly diversified by younger immigrants from Central America and Asia.

Expecting a comeback “We’ve got lots of immigrant agricultural workers who work in rural areas — and who have, in fact, been staples in our agricultural and natural resource extraction industries since the beginnings of our country. Now, immigrants are settling in our smaller Indiana towns such as Albion, DeMotte, and Carthage.” Technology also has potential to transform America’s oft-forgotten rural areas. Broadband will bring health services via the Internet, she predicts. Schools will be able to share resources through technology while accessing programs from universities and colleges around the world, and office workers will increasingly telecommute — gladly surrendering the stress of big city life for the quiet of the country. Despite these changes, small town families that have endured generations of poverty will likely continue to struggle. That’s where Wornell’s research comes in: She hopes it will help guide policy changes and public investments to more effectively help those families and reduce poverty in rural America. At the same time, she’s bullish about small towns’ future and their ability to evolve. She cites her own hometown of Harrisburg, where the population has more than doubled since her childhood and whose residents now have access to the Internet, thanks to broadband. And now, there’s a stoplight.

Fall/Winter 2019–20

43


Turn static files into dynamic content formats.

Create a flipbook
Issuu converts static files into: digital portfolios, online yearbooks, online catalogs, digital photo albums and more. Sign up and create your flipbook.