Letter from the Director

The mission of the Jay N. Darling Institute is to work in collaboration with others to advance sustainable rural communities in which all citizens have access to quality health care, nutritious food, economic opportunity, artistic experiences, and unimpaired natural resources.

Student learning through experience and benefit realization to rural stakeholders is center of all that the Institute pursues.

We focus on five core outcomes:

• Achieving sustainable use of natural resources to realize economic gain and ecological benefit across rural landscapes.
• Building resilient workforce pipelines for rural businesses so that they can compete across global markets.
• Facilitating equity and access to mental and physical health care so that those living in rural areas have complete personal and professional lives.
• Promote community development by providing tools, expertise, and knowledge that allow rural communities to avail themselves of new opportunities.
• Collaborate with new entrepreneurs and existing businesses to grow rural economies.

At the heart of all these outcomes is the DarlingCorps, or, the students that are awarded scholarships to contribute to projects to advance one or more of our outcomes. To date, students in DarlingCorps are: working with landowners in southern Iowa and northern Missouri to improve grassland health for grazing and conservation, designing community orchards and gardens in places like Perry, Iowa to remove barriers for access to healthy food, and advancing community improvement initiatives with diverse stakeholders in Madison County, Iowa. Our namesake, Jay N. Darling, was committed to partnering across difference to improve the lives of people and ecosystems. I am deeply honored to serve as the inaugural Paul and Claudia Schickler Executive Director of the Institute that bears his name.

Dr. Keith S. Summerville
Paul and Claudia Schickler Executive Director of the Jay N. Darling Institute