News at the School of Government
Dr. Patricia Mitchell
Director of Economic Development
Ashe County, NC
Creating Partnerships for Economic Recovery
Focused on the Big Picture
After 20 years of vacationing in western North Carolina and dreaming about living in the mountains, Pat Mitchell found the perfect opportunity to relocate when Ashe County needed a director of economic development. Since 2004 she has been working to preserve and grow the community she now calls home.
Mitchell is a highly regarded expert who has taught economic development, public budgeting and finance, and public administration at the undergraduate and graduate levels at several universities. She currently teaches in the master of public administration program at Appalachian State University. “I think there’s a significant value to having both the academic and real world perspectives,” says Mitchell.
She cites “practical scholarship” as a key advantage of the School of Government, where she has attended a range of community and economic development classes since 2005. “There is always such a mix of individuals in the classroom—academics and practitioners. The practitioners share experiences from the real world that inform the theoretical thinking, and they get to explore ideas about how things can and should work better. It’s a perfect exchange.”
At its core, economic development involves a community’s work to secure new business and retain and grow existing industry. Mitchell stresses the bigger picture that links development and quality of life. “In the end,” she says, “if you don’t have quality of life, then just developing business isn’t going to give you a good community.” In order to keep in touch with the current and emerging needs of Ashe County, she sits on boards and committees for a variety of organizations in her community.
“That broader focus on community and economic development is one of the strengths of the School of Government’s program,” says Mitchell. “Participating in courses at the School broadens one’s thinking about collaboration and partnerships, which need to be part of any discussion about creating sustainable local and regional economies.”
Focused on Recovery
While attending the School’s Development Finance Toolbox course in Chapel Hill recently, Mitchell talked about how Ashe County is addressing the current economic situation. Their strategies involve a lot of collaboration:
- The county’s Work Force Development Task Force has joined with Wilkes Community College to find ways of re-training people for new markets.
- The task force is working with the Northwest North Carolina Advanced Materials Cluster—a collaborative partnership for economic development in Ashe, Alleghany, and Wilkes counties. The program is circular: as jobs are lost, workers are re-trained for new industries—and having trained workers serves as a recruitment tool for new industry.
- The Ashe County Economic Development Commission is establishing a “green commission” to explore the potential for bringing in environmentally friendly jobs.
- And they are developing a Committee of 100, a public/private partnership to help recruit new jobs.
“We have a diverse economy,” says Mitchell, “and that’s on our side.”
Role of the School of Government
Mitchell has served as a member of the advisory committee to the School’s Community and Economic Development program, which fostered development of the Essentials of Economic Development course and is helping to identify course content, including best practices. “What that course does, particularly in rural communities, is very, very important,” says Mitchell. “The School of Government, in my opinion, is the School for economic development—the one with the expertise and the reach—and that is very important for North Carolina.”
Find out more about the Community and Economic Development program at the School of Government, including training opportunities, listservs, publications, and current projects.