North Central Regional Center for Rural Development

📌 Save the date!

Learn more about the Good Food for Michigan Project’s plan to connect Michigan food producers and Michigan institutions in our upcoming info session at 1 p.m. EDT on Tuesday, Aug. 25.
Register here:

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/jKntJNi_RqSSBbXVQp99hg #/registration

Michigan Department of Agriculture & Rural Development - MDARD
Center for Good Food Purchasing
MSU Center for Regional Food Systems

Dr. Ananth Ramaseri Chandra at Turtle Mountain College is organizing the first annual Native Computer Science & Cybersecurity Conference, Thursday, September 10, 2026. AIHEC’s Director of Cybersecurity Chad Davis will be joining as a presenter!

Find out more and register here: https://nativecscc.com/

Please join us Tue., August 25 at 2 pm ET for the webinar, Housing and Food Security in the North Central Region: Evidence from the 2026 NCR-Stat Survey. Registration: https://bit.ly/4fsdcJW

Presenter Samuel Mindes, Assistant Professor of Rural Sociology, Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice, Iowa State University and NCRCRD Fellow, will present key findings from the recently released, 2026 NCR-Stat: Housing and Food Security Survey which collected data on housing conditions, costs, and features, as well as food access, food security, and household demographics across the North Central Region.

For information about the NCR-Stat: Housing & Food Security Survey: https://bit.ly/4hk9MLD

The Center wishes to congratulate NCRCRD’s Associate Director, Michael Wilcox on his new position with Purdue Extension. As of today, Dr. Wilcox will assume the position of Assistant Extension Director for Health and Human Sciences and Community Development. In announcing the position, Dr. Angie Abbott, Associate Dean and Director of Purdue Extension shared, that Dr. Wilcox “will work closely with both teams as they pursue the goals of strengthening community resilience, economic opportunity and individual, family and community well-being.” https://extension.purdue.edu/from-the-director/index.html

Dr. Wilcox’s leadership in cultivating strong partnerships has created numerous collaborative opportunities for the North Central Region as well as our center and we’re very excited for the opportunities in collaboration his new position will create for rural communities in Indiana.

extension.purdue.edu

Congratulations to the CD-101 team!

Catch up on the Center’s news, publications, research, webinars, and regional opportunities in the Q2-2026 issue of the NCRCRD Quarterly. https://bit.ly/4wwhBmn
If you like what you see, please consider joining our mail list.

Learning opportunity in Minnesota on leading community transformation. Deadline around the corner: Aug 7

Gathering the Village 2026 learning cohort Make a difference in your community! Join and connect with others, collaborate on real challenges and grow skills to shape positive change.

Understanding the economic value of your festival or event Local festivals and community events do more than draw a crowd. Learn ways to measure their impact to your local economy.

You're invited to a Book Talk taking place on July 21 at 1pm US CST. ABCDI Steward Hunter Goodman will moderate our conversation on Locking Arms, Changing Communities: Leading Grassroots Change with the author John Hamerlinck. The book shares valuable resources for people seeking to improve the quality of life in their communities.

Register for free by scanning the QR code or visit https://abcdinstitute.org. See you there!

NCRCRD is pleased to announce the publication of a new open access, regional dataset – the NCR-Stat: Housing & Food Security Survey. This thematic survey provides important data on two critically understudied and increasingly important issues of the North Central Region.

NCRCRD developed this survey in collaboration with Samuel Mindes, Adjunct Assistant Professor at Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice, Iowa State University and NCRCRD Fellow, with the objective to better understand differences in housing situations and food security between households residing in rural and urban areas.

Mindes, who led the design of the survey as part of his Fellow project, was assisted by Iowa State University undergraduate student researcher, Samantha Mori and collaborated closely with NCRCRD Research and Extension Specialist, Zuzana Bednarik.
https://bit.ly/4hk9MLD