After weeks of travel, research, and deep community engagement, Cohort 22 has officially concluded the EPG May Institute! For our final week, the cohort traveled to Harlan County to observe the region’s entrepreneurial ecosystem firsthand. Our students stepped into the area's rich history with tours of Portal 31, the Coal Mining Museum, and the historic Benham Schoolhouse Inn, before settling in at Camp Blanton. The immersive experience continued with a walking tour of Harlan and an insightful discussion on rural development with Geoff Marietta, former director of the Pine Mountain Settlement School. The culmination of the May Institute was the final project. Students were challenged to develop an innovative idea to support rural prosperity in Harlan County. Moving from field observation to action, they grounded their ideas in theory from Strategies for Rural Prosperity, structured them using the Business Model Canvas, and backed them with concrete evidence by mapping regional entrep...