The Clemson University Office of Research Development hosted 45 faculty and staff members at the 2025 TigerSphere event, “Exploring, Building and Connecting Research with Rural Community Practice,” in the Peebles Room of the Hendrix Center, March 5, 2025.
TigerSphere aims to bring researchers from different disciplines together to share thoughts, build relationships, and form convergent research collaborations around a central theme. Recognizing that rural community development and well-being require a cross-sector approach, this TigerSphere focused on education, health and economic growth in rural communities.
The two-hour event consisted of five short talks from subject-matter experts from the University, followed by two breakout sessions, with attendees representing a broad range of Colleges and offices, including the College of Education, the College of Behavioral, Social and Health Sciences, the College for Agriculture, Forestry and Life Sciences, the Extension Center for Health Outreach and the Office of the President.
Professor Darris Means, the inaugural Dean’s Fellow for Rural Education in the College of Education, spearheaded the event.
“This event is an opportunity to come together as a Clemson community and uplift conversations around the term ‘rural,’ and better connect research to practice in rural communities,” said Means, whose work has focused on rural education and supporting youth on pathways to and through higher education for more than a decade.
“We know that to do the work of rural community development and well-being requires everyone to be at the table, Means said. “Our main goal for today is to leave here with a collective of faculty members, staff members, students and administrators willing to engage in the work to uplift rural communities across the state and beyond.”
Words matter
First speaker Ken Robinson, associate professor and agribusiness extension specialist in CBSHS, spoke to Means’ reflections about the term “rural.”
“As a sociologist, this topic of ‘rural’ is very important and dear to me, especially in regard to rural community and economic development,” said Robinson. “When I ask students in my class, ‘Is Clemson rural?’ You’d be surprised at the responses I get. Students from Atlanta or Charlotte immediately said, ‘Yes! Clemson is rural.’ But if I ask someone from Six Mile or Pickens, not necessarily. So, it very much depends on perspective.”
Robinson elaborated on the notion that “rural” is a social construct rather than the characteristics of a place. As demographics change, so do communities, he explained. Things like cities expanding and young people moving away can change the classification of a rural community. It’s up to Clemson, the biggest land-grant university in South Carolina, to identify the pockets of the state where people remain disadvantaged and use its resources to help them, he said.
“What this [event] represents is a commitment to well-being, not just for our University, but for our whole state,” said Chief Well-being Officer Anna Courie in her opening statements. “We believe that well-being is not just an individual pursuit, but a collective pursuit. It is a collective responsibility that we have to ourselves, our institutions, the communities we serve and the state for which we are a land-grant institution.”
Rural vs. urban misconceptions
Sonja Ardoin, associate professor of higher education, took to the podium after Robinson and described how she grew up in Vidrine, Louisiana — a town so tiny it didn’t have a zip code or stop light, with a K-12 school so small her graduating class had 23 people in it.
“That was my conceptualization of what rural was,” she explained. “I think Dr. Robinson is right. There are many ways we define ‘rural,’ and a lot of those are deficit-based: It’s not urban, or it lacks X, Y and Z. But there’s a lot of good stuff happening in rural areas too.”
Ardoin said a savior complex is associated with rural communities, a misperception that people living in those areas can’t help themselves and need to be saved. To flip the script on that, she suggested approaching those communities with an asset-based perspective.
“There are opportunities in rural towns. We have problems, but I don’t think they’re as bad as people think,” said Ardoin. “Again, there is an insider, outsider perspective on how we paint rurality and how people living in those places view it for themselves.”
Farm facts, family fueled
Later, extension specialist in agribusiness Adam Kantrovich took the podium to address some common misconceptions about the state of farming in South Carolina, such as the notion that most farms in the state are owned and operated by corporations. Not true, he said.
“95 percent of our farms are family-owned here,” he said, noting that the percentage of women in farming has been increasing steadily for many years.
“Females make up 36 percent of all producers across the country, and 58 percent of all farms have at least one female decision maker. In South Carolina, we’ve got almost 39,000 farmers.”
Means said that he considered the event a rousing success with five speakers and 45 participants.
“The fantastic speakers provided context on critical assets and resources in rural communities, as well as on rural education, rural health, and rural economic development,” said Means. “We also had important conversations related to building cross-institutional collaborations, rural youth development, building and sustaining partnerships in rural communities, and policy and advocacy for and with rural communities.”
Means added that the ideas and calls to action fostered during the event will live on through strategic application.
“The next step is to continue to build a collective of faculty, staff, administrators, and students committed to working alongside rural communities across South Carolina and beyond to support rural community development and well-being.”
- Learn more about how TigerSphere and the Office of Research Development are fostering solutions to society’s grand challenges at Clemson. Visit their web site at https://www.clemson.edu/research/division-of-research/offices/department-ord/events/tigersphere/index.html.