Ryan Pesch (University of Minnesota Extension Educator in Moorhead, MN) presents his findings as they relate to concentration of newcomers to the Upper Minnesota Valle region as well as profiling the media most likely to reach those new housholds. This project met the needs of the newcomer project team for providing information to target potential newcomer families based on surveys of recent newcomers to the Upper Minnesota Valley. Click here for the final report.

In a press release on Jan 19, 2012, Minnesota's Department of Employment and Economic Development reports that unemployment in Minnesota has fallen for the fourth straight month to 5.7% when seasonally adjusted. DEED also reports 7900 jobs were added in December. This brings the total number of jobs added in Minnesota in 2011 up to 25,300. For DEED's press release on December unemplyment, please click here.

The EDA Center newsletter for January 2012 is now available. Click here for the pdf or here to go to the newsletter archive.

The U.S. Department of Commerce has awarded the University of Minnesota, Crookston the $615,000 grant as Minnesota's EDA University Center for the next 5 years. UMC will work in collaboration with the University of Minnesota Extension office to acheive the EDA Center's goal of providing technical assistance, applied research and enhancing business development across the state of Minnesota. Click here to view the official University of Minnesota, Crookston press release.

Here at the EDA Center, we have begun producing a monthly newsletter. The main purpose of this monthly newsletter is to inform interested readers throughout Minnesota about economic development events and news around the state. From time to time, we will also highlight research projects our colleagues at the EDA Center are involved with. Email us at editor@edacenter.org if you have any economic development related issues you would like to see us highlight. Click here to visit our newsletter archive.

The Minnesota Intelligent Rural Communities (MIRC) project is over half-way complete. As with any project, the MIRC partners entered into this endeavour with clear goals in mind. In an effort to track the progress of each MIRC partner in accomplishing these goals, the University of Minnesota, Crookston has been responsible for collecting and collating monthly reports from each partner. To that end, we have put together a "snapshot" of each goal in a dashboard of charts that will allow you to stay up-to-date with each partner's goal and progress. Click here to view the MIRC Partners progress. Check back every month to see how much closer the MIRC partners are to reaching their goals.

On March 25th the U.S. Dept. of Commerce announced the awarding of a $4.7 million grant to the Grand Rapids-based Blandin Foundation, to conduct a statewide broadband development project across rural Minnesota. Through this grant, the Minnesota Intelligent Rural Communities (MIRC) coalition will bring a network of resources and support to rural Minnesota individuals and communities - especially those unemployed and seeking employment, small businesses, coalitions of government entities, and local leaders.

The EDA Center at the University of Minnesota, Crookston will serve as the lead evaluator for this large and broad-based project.
Go to: http://broadband.blandinfoundation.org/news/news-detail.php?intResourceID=1208 to learn more.

The EDA Center at the University of Minnesota, Crookston is one of more than 40 university centers nationwide, supported by the Economic Development Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce.

We conduct applied research, provide direct technical assistance and deliver educational programs to economic development agencies that support the economy of economically-distressed rural communities throughout Minnesota.