~by Daniel Walker, Community Planning Extension Specialist, Purdue Extension/Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant  Online course certifies planning officials and interested residents as Master Citizen Planners Purdue Extension and Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant have opened enrollment in American Citizen Planner – Indiana, an online training course for local planning officials and interested residents. Participants learn about core planning issues, …

~by Cheyanne Geideman & Melinda Grismer As any great leader knows, in order to lead effectively you must first meet people where they are. Every person’s experiences are different, and thus the way every community progresses through a pandemic will be different. During an informal NACDEP 2020 session, Grismer led a discussion using the graphic …

~by Gina Anderson, Floyd County Community Development Educator Let Us Learn, Inc. (LUL) was a brand-new 501(c)3 nonprofit at the beginning of 2017. We received our nonprofit status in December of 2016, and we were ready to get to work. I had never written a grant until then. When I saw the Purdue class on …

A year ago, when I started my new role as assistant director and program leader with Purdue Extension, I was focused on helping our team continue our success, increasing our reach and deepening our impact. As summer gave way to autumn and winter couldn’t decide if it was going to arrive or not, our entire …

~by Heather Strohm, Purdue Extension Regional Educator Since the COVID-19 crisis began, companies and communities have been running extremely lean on virtually every front, especially in the human resources department. While internet searches have traditionally centered around “manager training” and “leadership development,” Google Analytics indicates a declining trend of interest in these keywords. These terms …

~by Dr. Larry DeBoer, Purdue University We got trouble, my friends, with a capital T. The Indiana state budget closeout for fiscal 2020 was held in mid-July, so we have a good idea of how bad things are. Revenues fell 8 percent below forecast for the year, 23 percent from March through June. We used …

This article contains a list of resources for Indiana small businesses to support economic retention and recovery related to the COVID-19 coronavirus. It will be regularly updated to include the latest information and resources as they are made available. Business Counseling (No-Cost) Small Business Administration:  The SBA works with a number of local partners to …

The COVID-19 pandemic has created a global public health and economic crisis. Whether it is on the news, through your social media networks or simply noted in your daily life as you attempt to access goods and services, your personal and professional life is likely upside down right now. No one knows what the ‘new …

Purdue Extension provided a free workshop for local leaders to learn about Indiana’s property tax system and explore trends in local and regional property tax data on Friday, March 13, at the Purdue Extension Lake County Office.  Local government officials, community leaders, and residents from Lake and Porter counties participated in the workshop. Workshop participants …

As our store shelves are being rapidly emptied of food, hand sanitizer, medicines, masks and other ‘essentials,’ I have been thinking about the choices we make and the ways in which we conduct ourselves in our community. Adam Smith famously once said, “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the …