Rural Issues Symposium

Follow

• 

  From Knowledge to Action: How Climate Education Shapes Youth Engagement

  Jono Anzalone, Michelle Vázquez Jacobus, Lian Joseph, and Becky Buck

  This research explores the transformative potential of climate education programs designed specifically for youth, with a particular focus on how these programs can drive community engagement and leadership in the context of climate change. In collaboration with the Maine Economic Improvement Fund (MEIF) grant initiative on climate migration, this study examines the impact of educational interventions on youth's understanding of climate change and their subsequent participation in climate action. Utilizing a mixed-methods approach, data from pre- and post-event surveys collected during community conversations in rural Maine are analyzed to assess changes in climate awareness, confidence in public discourse, and willingness to engage in local environmental initiatives. Our findings indicate significant improvements in participants' knowledge and empowerment, particularly in their ability to articulate climate issues and envision actionable solutions within their communities. This poster will highlight how the integration of MEIF-funded community conversations further enriches the educational experience, providing youth with tools to explore and communicate the impacts of climate migration. This research underscores the critical role of tailored educational programs in fostering the next generation of climate leaders in rural areas, ultimately contributing to Maine's resilience against the growing challenges of climate change.

• 

  3D-printed culvert diffusers to improve rural transportation resiliency

  Sunil Bhandari and Roberto A. Lopez-Anido

  The increase in stormwater discharge, driven by climate change and land-use changes, has been exacerbated by the aging-related deterioration of existing diffusers, leading to culvert washouts. These washouts have significant consequences, blocking vehicle movement for days or even weeks, which disrupts access to disaster relief and emergency services in rural Maine, leaving these areas particularly vulnerable to storms. 3D-printed diffusers, as part of trenchless culvert rehabilitation technology, offer a potential solution to this problem. These diffusers enhance culvert discharge capacity, thereby helping to prevent washouts during high-discharge events caused by rainstorms. This trenchless technology avoids digging out and replacing old culverts offering cost-savings. Additionally, this technology is deployable without causing traffic disruptions. A prototype of the 3D-printed diffuser was successfully installed in Thorndike, ME, while a full system has been implemented on Route 85 in Rocky Brook, Newfields Rd, Exeter, NH. Further sites in Maine are being identified in collaboration with MaineDOT for additional implementations, aiming to strengthen infrastructure resilience across the state.

• 

  The Rural Educator Resilience Project: A Statewide Approach to Rural Educator Career Development

  Catharine Biddle, Ezekiel Kimball, Gert Nesin, Maria Frankland, and Esther Enright

  The Rural Educator Resilience Project is a statewide applied research project in partnership with school districts in Penobscot, Washington, Hancock, Aroostook and Oxford Counties that aims to intervene to support the resilience of rural educators so that they, in turn, can support the changing and diverse needs of rural students. One of the most pressing issues facing rural schools and communities is the rural teaching shortage as the education workforce adjusts to youth developmental and learning needs in the wake of remote and hybrid schooling that took place during COVID-19. Fewer young people are willing to be teachers, and fewer pre-service teachers want to teach in rural schools. Furthermore, teacher and school leader turnover prevents rural schools from realizing their potential as organizations that facilitate academic achievement and whole child well-being as well as inhibiting their ability to develop long-term, mutually beneficial relationships with external stakeholders in their communities such as businesses and social service agencies. This on-going project intervenes at key three moments in the rural educator career lifespan to provide evidence-based supports to rural educators and field-test new approaches to cultivating professional resilience. These three points include a) educators in their first three years on the job; b) mid-career teachers looking to take on new roles and responsibilities in their environments (ie. teacher leader development); and c) mid-career teachers interested in school administration. Our poster will showcase the work being done across each of these three strands to support long-term workforce development and retention for schools and districts in rural Maine.

• 

  Equitable Treatment for Long COVID Patients in Rural States: Recommendations from a Sociologist/Sufferer/Survivor

  Amy Blackstone

  When seeking medical treatment, all long COVID patients begin the process at a disadvantage for they bear the stigma of a condition that they know is enshrouded in misunderstanding, disinformation, and a host of political baggage. Add to this the unique challenges of seeking treatment in a remote state like my own home state of Maine and the difficulties increase exponentially. Drawing from my experience as a 4+ year survivor/sufferer of long COVID in Maine through the use of autoethnographic methods, I lay out the challenges faced by long COVID patients in rural, medically underserved, socioeconomically disadvantaged states and suggest policy changes that would promote greater health equity. Challenges include finding primary care providers who are a) accepting new patients and b) up-to-date enough on education so as to be competent to diagnose and refer long COVID patients; accessing care that does not require extensive travel; having to regularly educate medical staff about one’s condition; and others. Suggestions include increasing access to telehealth services; reducing Medicaid and Medicare restrictions on telehealth appointments; allowing and facilitating cross-state telehealth appointments; and increased/enhanced education for rural health providers.

• 

  Cultivating Teacher Resilience through a Teacher Leadership Collaborative

  Rebecca Buchanan, Kari Thurman, Bailey Edward, Carli Goodsell, Ethan Mathieu, Mo Weitman, and Miranda Snyder

  Rural areas are experiencing a shortage of qualified teachers. Engaging in collective teacher leadership work has been linked to increased self efficacy for teachers and improved retention. While conceptualized in a variety of ways in the literature, most scholarship on teacher leadership focuses on how the actions teachers take relate to improved classroom practice and school culture. We view teacher leadership as a complex, non-linear, both/and process, one in which teachers do transform their identities and their practice to enhance student achievement, but also as an expanded role for teachers within their schools, districts, states, and beyond. Over the past four years, we have coordinated the Teacher Leadership Collaborative (TLC), a voluntary group of teacher leaders from across the state of Maine (and beyond) and in a variety of career stages that meet monthly to engage in collective inquiry and non-positional mentoring. The TLC is founded in a framework we developed for teacher leadership that has three pillars: inquiry, social justice, and an extended role. We have conducted participatory action research alongside the TLC members, which has been presented at international conferences and produced a co-authored publication. Our collaborative work demonstrates the value of non-hierarchical teacher leadership communities as re-moralizing spaces for educators who may otherwise feel isolated. This is particularly salient in rural areas, and we have used a combination of virtual, in-person, and hybrid structures to create connections that cross boundaries of geographic and institutional space.

• 

  Amplifying Voices: Engaging diverse populations in the Maine Climate Plan update

  Louise Chaplin, Sharon Klein, Caroline Noblet, Jasmine Lamb, and Catherine Mardosa

  Our project, at the University of Maine Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions, aims to increase participation and inclusion of Maine’s disadvantaged populations in the 2024 statewide climate plan update. Based on recommendations from the Equity Subcommittee of the Maine Climate Council, this project increases participation of at-risk populations such as people of color, low-income households, and rural communities across the state, by partnering with organizations local to target populations to help facilitate discussions, surveys, and focus groups.

• 

  Maine’s vanishing maternity care and community resilience: Interrupting the resource-capacity erosion cycle

  Gianna DeJoy

  Rural maternity care is in decline across the U.S., with most rural women living over 30 minutes from their nearest hospital-based obstetric unit. In Maine, eight hospitals closed their obstetric units over the last 15 years, including five closures since 2020. Individuals in many rural Maine communities now face hours-long drives to access maternity care. These distances are associated with a range of adverse pregnancy outcomes. Hospital-based obstetric unit closures are driven by factors such as low birth rates and staffing challenges that are related to broader demographic and economic patterns, including an aging population and shifting livelihoods. When such larger trends or disasters like the COVID pandemic put pressure on rural hospitals, unprofitable obstetric services become an enticing cut. Previous research on this issue has not addressed the relationship between a community’s maternal health resources and its adaptive capacity. Bridging the literature on rural maternity care and climate resilience, I suggest the two are tied and mutually reinforcing. Environmental shocks and stressors that destabilize rural economies and populations can also exacerbate the factors that influence rural maternity unit closures. Health resource losses signal that a community is struggling and may encourage younger people with more job skills and capital to look elsewhere when starting families, risking a cycle of stress, resource loss, and rural decline. From this standpoint, rural maternity unit closures are not only a canary for community vulnerability, but also a potential point of intervention to stem resource loss and invest in community health and sustainability.

• 

  Lighting the Way: Rural Schools and the Future of STEAM Education

  Justin Dimmel and Eric Pandiscio

  Mathematics teachers, curriculum reformers, and educational researchers have long sought strategies for making mathematics meaningful and accessible to all learners. A challenge to these efforts is the disconnect between the abstract, theoretical qualities of mathematical concepts and the grounded, empirical realities of day-to-day life. Students on the receiving end of 'real world' mathematics instruction tend to find themselves in a bizarro world, in which they are asked to use mathematics to solve problems that no mathematician would use mathematics to solve. The goal of our work is to resolve this disconnect. We are leveraging the unique geographical positions of rural schools in Maine to showcase how sunlight can be used for doing mathematical work. Sunlight is mathematically significant because it is an abundant, universally accessible source of parallel lines—that is, lines that do not intersect. We are using sunlight to design and install sculptures (i.e., a SunRule) that function as calculators on outdoor campuses at schools, museums, and municipalities throughout Maine. What's significant about our design is that it depends on real-world sunlight to work. Our poster presents how a SunRule sculpture functions to model multiplication and division by stretching or shrinking beams of light. We consider how a SunRule installation at rural schools could be the focal feature for an outdoor STEAM laboratory classroom that would integrate mathematics, biology (e.g., gardening, soil science), earth science (e.g., the daylight cycle, latitude and longitude), engineering (the design and installation of the device), and visual art.

• 

  The Role of Teacher-Scientist Partnerships in Engaging Students as Citizen Scientists in Addressing Drinking Water Quality in Rural Maine and New Hampshire Communities.

  Jane Disney, Juyoung Shim, Doug Currie, Judith Roe, Sarah Hall, Nick Baer, Flor Fahnestock, Priyanka Roy-Chowdhury, Karen Bieluch, and Abby Roche

  Exposure to arsenic in well water is a well-documented public health issue in Maine and New Hampshire. The most common source of arsenic contamination of well water in these states is the metasedimentary bedrock that leaches arsenic into groundwater. These groundwater reserves often exceed the EPA limit of 10 ppb. Arsenic exposure is known to cause an array of health issues; however, many people still do not test and treat their wells. To address this problem, we developed a school-based citizen science project for rural schools. Local scientists were partnered with secondary school teachers to engage students in collecting well water samples for analysis of toxic metals. Over the last six years, thousands of students have participated in the project, collecting over 4000 water samples. Through Ripple Effect Mapping, a process that captures program impacts through “appreciative inquiry,” mind mapping, and qualitative analysis, we learned that teacher-scientist partnerships are having a positive impact on project outcomes by facilitating data analysis, advocacy, and community action. These partnerships reinforced understanding of the need for students to engage with data, provided support tools and coaching for students to advocate for change, increased data reach and health risk messaging in communities, and impacted community decision-making. Follow-up surveys of well owners who contributed drinking water samples to the project indicated that participation in the project was a significant factor in their decisions to mitigate arsenic, demonstrating the potential of our school-based approach to impact public health in rural communities.

• 

  Rural Resilience: The Role for Innovative Public Transportation

  Connor Evans-Ralston, Kathleen Spear, and Jonathan Rubin

  Access to employment, education, healthcare and shopping is essential for any community. For those living in rural communities, these destinations are often farther away typically requiring access to a private vehicle or public transit as active transportation options are challenging given the distances involved and the lack of sidewalks, bike lanes, and other active transport systems. Rural communities can be particularly vulnerable to climate change as they may lack the human adaptive capacity to plan for and respond to climate-related natural disasters and generally possess more rigid transport systems. Our work reviews the provision of rural public transit in Maine and similar rural states and makes recommendations on how innovative public transit, broadly speaking, can enhance mobility and add to rural resilience. In addition, we explore applied and theoretical applications of on-demand transit and microtransit. We note that on-going, stable funding for public transit and rural public transit continues to be a challenge.

• 

  Sustaining and Increasing Participation of Rural Seniors in a Senior Center

  Michelle Fontaine

  This case study’s objective was to sustain and increase senior participation in senior center activities by examining the rural senior perception of environmental needs and support of a local senior center. Senior centers assist with aging in place well and aid seniors to be socially active within their communities. Much of the literature around senior centers has focused on urban environments and not on the specific needs of the rural senior. In this study, 24 individuals were interviewed. The questions examined the seniors’ perception about the functionality and accessibility of the senior center to meet their physical and social needs using the person environment fit theory (PE-Fit theory). PE-Fit affects the perceptions and behaviors of the person, which influences whether individuals participate in senior center activities. Transcripts of the interviews were analyzed using NVivo software searching for themes. The main themes were centered around activities expected at a senior center such as meals, games, and discussion groups. Themes around barriers were transportation, time, and health issues. These themes were used to recommend strategies and guidelines for increasing senior participation in senior centers. The analysis provided guidelines for senior centers to better fit their environments to the unique needs of rural seniors. Furthermore, understanding how rural seniors feel that they fit into an environment, and what they perceive their needs are, aids in the development of supportive strategies from other community-based organizations to assist older adults to live and function better within their community which leads to positive social change.

• 

  Supporting Students, Strengthening Communities

  Maria Frankland

  Favorable mental health—including psychological, social, and emotional wellbeing—contributes to positive developmental outcomes. Adverse childhood experiences such as substance use disorder, violence in the home, and abuse are often quantified as an ACE score that ranges from zero to 10. Higher ACE scores—especially scores or four or more—point toward more devastating health, social, and academic consequences throughout the lifespan. Support for student mental health and social-emotional development, while always essential for school success and positive developmental outcomes, took on renewed urgency in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Abrupt changes to daily routines, heightened fear and anxiety, and isolation from support systems increased the risk of suicidal ideation, self-injury, domestic violence, child abuse, and substance abuse. A disproportionate shortfall of mental health professionals, coupled with structural barriers to access in remote settings, positioned rural students at greater risk of suffering negative psychological health consequences due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This poster will highlight the efforts of a rural Maine school district to mitigate these risks via a grow-your-own program for mental health professionals. Using funds from a USDE School-Based Mental Health grant, the district aims to support local workforce development by mitigating barriers to preparing for school-based mental health careers. As local program participants complete the education and training required for certification and licensure, increased availability of credentialed school-based mental health providers is expected to support positive developmental outcomes for rural students.

• 

  From First-Year to Finale: A Holistic Approach to Career Integration in Higher Education

  Austin French and Linda Beck

  Explore how UMF has taken the Research Learning Experiences and Pathways to Careers initiative within UMS TRANSFORMS and integrated them to ensure career exploration and development throughout the entirety of a student's journey at the university. From Research Learning Experience courses built into our First Year Fusion courses, to Advanced Research Learning Experiences that offer opportunities to dive deeper into discipline-specific career information. After the exploratory components, our pre-professional seminars allow our students to embark on a course that walks them through the internship search, application, interview, selection, and preparation process. This progression culminates with students participating in field placements to gain valuable hands-on experience and networking opportunities, with a symposium-style presentation upon completion of the placement to emphasize the reflection process of their career development experience.

• 

  Economic Integration of Rural Areas with Large Urban Centers

  Todd Gabe, Oluwasegun Babatunde Adekoya, Richard Afatsao, Todd Gabe, Johnson Oliyide, and Thomas F. P. Wiesen

  A variety of factors impact the economic performance and resilience of U.S. rural areas, including a region’s level of human capital, industry structure, amenities and a rural area’s economic integration with large urban centers. Our poster presents results from a USDA-funded project that examines the economic integration of all U.S. rural counties with large U.S. metropolitan areas such as New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Dallas, Atlanta, Washington DC, and others. Economic integration is measured with a method of econometric connectedness, which uses monthly employment data from over 30 years to examine how economic shocks in big cities affect economic activity in rural areas. The results show a wide range of economic integration across counties, with some rural areas having economies that exhibit virtually no integration with U.S. urban centers while other communities are highly integrated. The econometric connectedness method provides a novel way to measure the urban influence of U.S. counties for comparing the economic performance of regions across the urban-to-rural spectrum and examining the effects of “rurality” on an economic indicator of interest (e.g., employment growth, housing prices). Our results complement existing indicators such as the Urban Influence Codes of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which place U.S. counties in one of twelve discrete categories based on their population size and proximity to an urban area. Unlike the USDA Urban Influence Codes, our measure of econometric connectedness has a continuous scale that ranges from zero to 100, which is calibrated using observed patterns of month-to-month employment fluctuations.

• 

  Maine Community Resilience Workbook

  Parker Gassett

  The Maine Community Resilience Workbook (2023 edition) is a comprehensive guide designed to assist communities and municipal officials in integrating climate change considerations into planning, town operations, and residential and commercial preparedness. This how-to book provides a centralized source of information and resources, enabling local leaders to make informed decisions and take proactive steps towards climate adaptation. Developed through a collaborative effort involving nearly 100 contributing authors, the workbook represents several years of iterative engagement and expertise from various stakeholders. Chapters include: • How to start a new climate initiative in your community • Data, resources, and decision support tools to analyze hazards and adaptation options • Planning, implementation, and evaluation • Recommendations and resources for partnerships and collaborations • How to integrate climate action with other community initiatives • A comprehensive list of Maine's funding and finance resources for climate change projects • How to access technical assistance • Professional development opportunities for town staff and community leaders You can access this resource online by searching for the Maine Community Resilience Workbook. A 2nd edition update is underway and printed copies are expected to be available in winter 2025.

• 

  Bridging the gap: Tackling nursing faculty shortages through innovative partnerships

  Shannon Gauvin and Erin Bellaire

  The ongoing faculty shortage in nursing schools across the United States presents a significant barrier to addressing the escalating demand for registered nurses. This shortage has led to a substantial reduction in the capacity of nursing programs to admit qualified students. Despite targeted efforts and investments by federal and state agencies, the faculty shortage persists, exacerbated by non-competitive academic salaries, high workloads, and a pervasive lack of recognition for the faculty role within academic institutions. The disparity in compensation between clinical practice and academic roles, along with the requirement for advanced degrees in academia, further discourages nurses from pursuing faculty positions. The American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) has long emphasized the critical link between the broader nursing shortage and the deficit in nursing faculty. A 2021 AACN survey reported 8% national faculty vacancy rate—the highest since 2013. With projections that nearly one-third of the aging nursing faculty workforce will retire by 2025, the situation demands immediate, bold, and collaborative action. In response to these challenges, the University of Maine at Augusta (UMA) and MaineGeneral launched a collaborative initiative in 2021 designed to address the clinical education needs of nursing students. This partnership, which established a clinical educator role filled by a baccalaureate prepared nurse from Maine General, has successfully expanded to include multiple healthcare organizations across the communities UMA serves. This cost-effective, scalable model could serve as an exemplar for mitigating the faculty shortage.

• 

  Co-Development of Maine's Rural Arts and Agriculture Economy

  William Giordano

  This research program hypothesizes that viable arts and agriculture co-development also demonstrates pathways to further address the statewide concerns about the loss of small and family farms in Maine and regionally over the last century. Developed over 10 years, especially in Hancock, Knox, Cumberland and York Counties - which are also unceded Wabanaki territories, it explores innovation across agriculture, food systems and arts economies in Maine. It tracks performing arts stages and relative infrastructure and workforce development in rural communities, and their emergence and co-development among innovative food system businesses. Outcomes show trends that may improve the viability of both, but can also stifle sustainability and career advancement if not well planned, capitalized, and executed. Successful co-development frames an often overlooked statistic of what Maine Department Economic and Community Developent (DECD) "10 Year Strategy" loosely referred to as ‘makers’ and the gig economy, as vital components of leading and/or contributing to the emergence of ‘hubs of excellence’ - DECD's term for anchors of Maine's economy. This program’s outcomes lead to the hypothesis that investment into co-development of art and agriculture sub-sectors of Maine’s economy are underfunded relative to Maine Technology Institute’s “seven technology sectors” despite their deep talent pools, willing workforce, and resourceful early, mid- and late stage professionals extant and embedded within Maine rural and urban centers.

• 

  Beyond 365 Days: A Retrospective Evaluation of Trekkers

  Sarah Goan and Madison Burke

  The Trekkers program in Rockland, ME is an outdoor-based long-term model program serving young people in mid-coast Maine since 1994. Trekkers supports students from 7th grade until graduation to build social, emotional, and intellectual resiliency through one-to-one peer mentoring, expeditionary learning, community service, and adventure-based education. This study explored the impact of the Trekkers program model and relied upon three data sources: the Holistic Student Assessment (HSA) which is a self-assessment measure of strengths and challenges; attendance and achievement data from the local area high school; and data from the National Student Clearinghouse. The research team compared self-assessment data for 22 Trekkers participants in the 9th/10th grades to a matched pool of 9th/10th graders drawn from Oceanside High School through a cross-sectional analysis and an independent samples t-test. We also analyzed self-assessments collected from the Trekkers’ participants (n=89) over time, conducting paired t-tests and Wilcoxon signed-rank tests over two timepoints. Our analysis revealed positive outcomes for Trekkers participants when compared to themselves over time, as well as when compared to their peers, most notably in terms of emotional resilience, trust, relationships, school attendance and college initiation. The study provides evidence for policymakers and practitioners in Maine and beyond to support community-school partnerships focused on long-term mentoring and youth resilience building efforts to successfully promote rural youth academic and career success.

• 

  Investing in Rural Maine Youth through theAspirations Incubator Pilot

  Sarah Goan, Elora Way, and Emma Schwartz

  The Rural Future Fund’s (RFF) Aspirations Incubator is a long-term, youth development program focused on raising aspirations by increasing resiliency for students growing up in rural Maine, giving them the opportunity to develop meaningful relationships through mentorship, community connection, and introducing them to new opportunities. RFF worked with a group of rural youth development organizations to implement the Aspirations Incubator (AI) model to create comprehensive mentoring-based programming for youth starting in Grade 7 and continuing through high school graduation. This study used a mixed-methods approach to explore the impact of the six-year pilot in five rural Maine communities. DIP staff conducted key informant interviews, student focus groups, student surveys, and site visits. The evaluation also incorporated the sites’ grant reports; the Holistic Student Assessment (HSA) which is a self-assessment measure of strengths and challenges; school attendance rates; and academic achievement scores on standardized tests. Most students noted some type of positive social or emotional change resulting from their AI program participation. AI students performed strong academically and had higher attendance rates compared to their peers. Students also reported that their AI program helped increase their exposure to new experiences, which included college and career exploration, and this expanded students’ ideas of what was possible for their lives, and inspired them to pursue different or more ambitious post-secondary plans. In fact, 83% of the 2023 AI graduating seniors planned to attend two- or four-year college, well above the 2022 state average of 52% for college enrollment. The implications of these results suggest that to improve rural young people’s lives, youth-serving programs and organizations should consider making relationship-building the core of their work.

• 

  Unveiling Regional Economic Patterns: Regional Business Cycles in Maine

  Ruth Griffith, Andrew Crawley, and Adam Daigneault

  Business cycles in Maine's economic summary areas exhibit notable variations, yet the specific dynamics within different regions remain underexplored. This study applies the Bry-Boschan Quarterly (BBQ) business cycle dating algorithm to uncover disparities in business cycles between rural and urban areas in Maine from 2016 to 2022, using high-frequency, consistent monthly sales tax data. Our findings reveal significant differences in business cycle behavior, with rural areas experiencing greater volatility compared to urban areas. Employing econometric modeling, we investigate the impact of business cycles on sales tax revenue. Preliminary results indicate a strong correlation between business cycles and sales tax, alongside other influential factors: employment and labor force participation exhibit positive correlations, whereas unemployment and the COVID-19 pandemic exhibit negative correlations. These insights provide policymakers with essential information to design targeted policies that address the distinct economic conditions across Maine's regions.

• 

  Calling People In: The Unmet Needs for Belonging & Connectedness in Aroostook County

  Kathryn Harnish, Beverly Wagner, and Mark Wright

  Purpose In the fall of 2023, the Aroostook County Health Improvement Partnership (ACHIP), a multi-sector partnership mobilized to address individual and community health issues in The County, conducted extensive research to explore how unmet health-related social needs affect residents' lives. The study focused on identifying factors influencing well-being, with particular attention to the impact of social connectedness and belonging, issues deeply felt by many in the region. Methods ACHIP used a mixed-methods approach, including qualitative interviews and surveys, to collect data from a diverse group of Aroostook County residents. The research centered on social connectedness, perceptions of belonging, and access to informal supports. Data collection took place over two months, and thematic analysis identified key trends related to unmet social needs. Results While many expected challenges surfaced, the profound impact of alienation and lack of belonging was surprising. Only 58% of participants strongly agreed they had reliable social support, revealing widespread feelings of isolation, particularly among those new to the area. Cultural identity and social stigma also shaped individuals' perceptions of their social environment, leaving many feeling "othered." Conclusions The findings emphasize the crucial role of fostering belonging and strengthening social networks in Aroostook County, where a shrinking population threatens rural resilience. Belonging is vital to well-being, and community interventions focused on enhancing social inclusion—"calling people in"—may be key to addressing health-related social needs and sustaining the region's vitality amidst demographic challenges.

• 

  Advancing Place-Based Understandings of Resilience in Maine’s Lobster Fishery

  Clea Harrelson and Christine Beitl

  Social resilience tools, indicators, and targets used to plan for climate change can be strengthened and made more actionable through ground-truthing in community contexts. This work bridges generalizable indicators of resilience developed for the lobster industry as part of an ongoing National Science Foundation grant (#2220564) with understandings of climate risks and factors that influence resilience-related behaviors in two coastal Maine communities. Through interviews and participant observation, this project explores how people in communities with high reliance on lobstering perceive changes in trend and intensity for existing indicator ideas, such as coastal accessibility, as a way to understand potential differences in trends of resilience indicators and evidence from people’s own perceptions of change. Resilience activities are also mapped across key actors in each lobstering community to understand how future resilience actions may be enabled. Additionally, collaborators who engage in interviews will also be asked explicitly about the definitions and data used for existing resilience indicators to inform future resilience work. This project will be completed by October 2024 and enabled through partnership with a coastal Maine nonprofit, the Island Institute, and relationships with local leaders such as those in fisheries associations or local government. Working to complement resilience tools such as indices with meaningful questions about individual and community perceptions and behavior creates a possible model of next steps for resilience indicator research and that helps bridge broad resilience efforts with local experiences and well-being in rural, coastal Maine.

• 

  Effects of Delivery of the PEERS® Curriculum via Telehealth as Part of Pre ETS Provided by a Rural State Office of Vocational Rehabilitation

  Sarah Howorth, Joo-Young Lee, and Libby Stone-Sterling

  This study investigated the efficacy of the school-based Program for the Education and Enrichment of Relational Skills (PEERS®) when implemented as a pre-employment transition service, on the social competence of teens and young adults with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The program was administered weekly by vocational rehabilitation counselors via telehealth. Results indicate a decrease in the severity of the ASD symptomatology pertaining to social communication. Participants were invited to, and hosted, more get-togethers with peers who shared their interests. Implications for individuals on the autism spectrum and for employment transition service providers are discussed.

• 

  Creating Inclusive Teaching Capacity in Rural Schools

  Sarah Howorth, Tracy Whitlock, Erin Frazier, Sara Flanagan, Sarah Howorth, Kate McLeod, Rachel Brown-Chidsey, and Walter Kimball

  A Maine state steering committee of education thought-leaders who work across the University of Maine System and Maine Department of Education has been working together with the CEEDAR Center since 2023 to focus on building the inclusive capacity of our state's education personnel preparation systems. Our goal is to better prepare teachers and educational leaders to more effectively support diverse students using multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS). Recognizing current challenges faced by Maine's rural schools, a significant part of our steering committee work this year is focused on creating expanded opportunities within UMS for future educators and leaders to earn dual certifications in general and special education. This collaborative and strategic effort seeks to build a more highly-skilled and inclusive teaching workforce capable of meeting the growing and diverse needs of students across rural PreK-12 settings. By increasing the inclusive preparedness of our UMS educator preparatory programs, we aim to improve PreK- 12 education for all students, improve PreK-12 school and post-secondary outcomes for students with disabilities, and increase teacher retention and resiliency in rural areas.

• 

  4-H Maple Woodlands Agriculture and Workforce Development

  Andrew Hudacs

  Every rural community has a unique collection of natural, physical, and social structures that comprise the context or environment in which children live and learn (Flora & Flora, 2008; Hudacs, 2020). The potential for rural children to live in rural communities after becoming adults is substantially driven by the opportunity to earn a livable income. Rural communities can be categorized according to the industries that support them, such as tourism, higher education institutions, agriculture, natural resource extraction, or mills for producing goods (Hudacs, 2020). When large scale economic development resources are not available to expand the scope and variety of career opportunities, young adults who would like to remain in rural communities may look to entrepreneurial and small business activities for generating income. This poster session begins with a brief overview of the economic and social needs of Maine’s rural communities, including the need for rural positive youth development programs. Then, session attendees will learn about the 4-H Maple Woodland Agriculture program, which is designed for youth to develop workforce skills and knowledge, entrepreneurialism, value-added food production, hands-on learning experiences with industry partners. Additionally, the program explores pathways to post-secondary education and careers in other related industries. Furthermore, as part of an applied research project in 2025, program participants will explore personal interests in workplace activities aligned with John Holland’s Theory of Career Choice. Lastly, session attendees will learn about the current development of a micro-credential in maple sugar production with industry partners.