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	Betsy DiSalvo, Corey Dalton, Scott Trent
	Betsy DiSalvo, Shai Cullop, Scott Trent
	Betsy DiSalvo, Shai Cullop, Scott Trent

Corey Dalton, Andrew Charron, Shai Cullop, Elizabeth DiSalvo, Scott Trent
Radford University

Subject Listing - Sociology/Anthropology
Advisor: Mrs. JoAnn Asbury

Saturday, Oral Session 7, Presentation 4, Carmichael Hall 231

REKINDLING THE FIRE: A CULTURAL STUDY OF APPALACHIAN ASSETS IN WYTHE COUNTY, VIRGINIA

The Appalachian Regional Commission asked us to answer the question, "How do we build on community assets to shape a positive future for Appalachia"? in conjunction with the 2005 Appalachian Teaching Project. Our answer, as it has been in past years, is education, specifically in conjunction with the Appalachian Arts and Studies in Schools (AASIS) program at Radford University. This program is a mentor/scholar opportunity that involves 80 Radford University mentors and over 160 scholars from surrounding high schools. The goals of AASIS are two fold: to encourage to encourage promising young Southwest Virginia students to pursue higher education and to give these students an opportunity to learn more about the culture of the Appalachian region. The focus of this study was to survey students in three public high schools in Wythe County, Virginia. Radford University has AASIS programs established in two of these schools. Our objective was to determine if the schools were AASIS programs were established harbored more of an appreciation and understanding for community asset than the non-AASIS school. After collecting and analyzing our data, we determined that schools with AASIS programs were in fact less likely to understand post-secondary educational and scholarship opportunities within Wythe County. The results also showed that AASIS participating schools did not take as much of an advantage of their cultural assets as did the non-AASIS school. We hypothesize that because our AASIS schools are removed from the county seat, they are at a disadvantage to utilizing their community assets as their non-AASIS counterparts. In order to compensate for these discrepancies, we plan to suggest to our mentors within these schools to gear their second semester programming towards informing their scholars about their wealth of community assets. We also plan to do a follow-up study at the conclusion of the school year to see how the scholar's perceptions have changed.

Appalachian Regional Studies Center
Radford University

Advisor: Mrs. JoAnn Asbury, Instructor and Associate of the Appalachian Regional Studies Center, Department of English, Radford University, Radford, VA