The “Know Your Region” project utilized the expertise of academics, developers, and national organizations to create a professional, convenient, and informative resource capable of promoting economic development across the US.  Although recent decades brought unprecedented growth to urban hubs, non-metro communities have remained disproportionally poor.   Out-sourcing of low-skilled jobs throughout the 20th century fundamentally changed the landscape of many rural communities, eliminating industries that were once the bedrock of local economies.   For instance, while two-thirds of all workers held low-skilled jobs in the field or factory in 1900, today most rural workers are employed in the growing service sector – a sector which requires higher skills than those industries that historically drove the economies of rural communities.  These changes necessitate that practitioners, particularly those in rural communities, must develop new strategies that capitalize on regional and clustering potentials in order to promote the viability of their respective economies.  
 
The curriculum developed through this project was designed to accomplish the following three goals relevant to practitioners dedicated to promoting local economic prosperity: 

1. to shrink the cognitive gap between academia and local and regional economic development practitioners, workforce development specialists, and educational planning practitioners;
2. to promote economic prosperity within the historically distressed communities of rural America, by identifying linkages with urban growth centers; and,
3. to serve as an adaptable technical assistance and training tool for economic, workforce, and education planning efforts nationwide.