The Appalachian Project, Ohio (AP) is a mixed-methods, interdisciplinary team of faculty, staff, and graduate and undergraduate students dedicated to understanding the educational routes of young people in the Appalachian counties of Ohio. To date, project members have already collected background research on the region, conducted visits to 15 counties, and accumulated over 500GB of video interviews with community members. We have presented at a conference on poverty at OSU as well as at a roundtable at the 2013 and 2014 annual conferences of the Appalachian Studies Association.
The AP team takes a predominantly narrative approach to data collection, relying on quantitative data for supporting and complicating information. We believe that listening to the personal reflections of the young people and older adults affected by economic and educational challenges in the region will give us a fuller picture of the issues affecting Appalachian Ohio and lead us to new findings to assist recovery. The purpose of the project is to use interdisciplinary approaches to identify the factors affecting Ohio Appalachian students’ decisions and/or readiness to obtain post-secondary education, understand Ohio Appalachian students’ strategies for negotiating their college experiences, produce recommendations for addressing the barriers and challenges that students face, work toward creating a sustainable educational and economic atmosphere in Appalachian Ohio, and create a conversation at OSU and beyond about the issues Ohio Appalachian students and the region face.
The Appalachian Project Collection contains video interviews, audio interviews, photographs, itineraries, and ephemera from field visits to Ohio Appalachian counties between 2011-2015. It also contains print and electronic Appalachian Project administrative documents, such as notes, meeting agendas and minutes, grant applications, grant reports, and research collected about the Appalachian Ohio region.
The Appalachian Project was created by Dr. Patricia Cunningham in 2011 under the Ohio State University's International Poverty Solution Collaborative initiative. When IPSC ran out of funding in 2012, the project shifted to the Center for Folklore Studies archives under the direction of Dr. Cassie Patterson. Dr. Cunningham and Dr. Patterson co-coordinated the Appalachian Project until Dr. Cunningham's death in 2017. The project remains an initiative of the Center for Folklore Studies and the collection is retained at the Folklore Archives.
Some interviews require that researchers use pseudonyms when referencing interviewees and the individuals they reference.