About

WVU Extension Service 

Community-based tourism is a visitor-host interaction that has meaningful participation by both and generates economic and conservation benefits for local communities and environments. The key rationale underlying the approach and objectives is that community-based tourism through increased intensities of participation can provide widespread economic and other benefits and decision-making power to communities. These economic benefits act as incentives for participants and the means to conserve the natural and cultural resources on which income generation depends.

The primary aim of participatory strategies is that local people become active subjects of the development effort rather than passive recipients. More specifically, the concept is related to the active involvement of local people in the choice, execution and evaluation of projects and programs designed to raise their living standards. This shift requires devolving political power from centralized systems to smaller units, the purpose being to relocate decision-making, empowering members of local communities and giving them ultimate control over the development process.

 Team Members include:

Doug Arbogast

Rural Tourism Specialist
WVU Extension Service Community Resources and Economic Development

Responsible for developing and delivering rural tourism development services and in doing so works collaboratively with the team of Extension professionals and WVU faculty to promote sustainable development of tourism businesses in West Virginia. Duties entail development of proactive applied research, teaching, and service programs in tourism development including planning and managing rural tourism, rural tourism business opportunities, marketing, and economics of tourism.

Research Interests

• Sustainable Tourism
  
• Destination Management
  
• Participatory Planning

Daniel Eades

Extension Specialist/Asst. Professor in Rural Economics, WVU Extension Service

Research Interests

• Community Data Analysis
  
• Economic Impact Analysis
  
• Rural and Community Economic Development
  
• Sustainable Agriculture

WVU Landscape Architecture Community Engagement Lab

Participatory design is an approach to design that attempts to actively involve all stakeholders (e.g. employees, partners, customers, citizens, end users) in the design process to help ensure that the product designed meets their needs and is usable. The term is used in a variety of fields as a way of creating environments that are more responsive and appropriate to their inhabitants' and users' cultural, emotional, spiritual and practical needs. The key attribute of participatory design is that it is a process which allows multiple voices to be heard and involved in the design, resulting in outcomes which suit a wider range of users. 

 Team Members include:

Peter Butler

Director of Design and Community Development Associate
Professor of Landscape Architecture 
Extension Specialist in Landscape Architecture

Peter’s research interests include cultural landscape research and planning; community design proces s; industrial landscape reclamation and interpretation; and design studio pedagogy. His research projects include cultu ral landscape inventory, analysis and treatment; visualization; brownfields reclamation; land use planning; historic transportation corridor planning; and participatory design methods.

Research Expertise

• Cultural and Heritage Tourism 
  
• Participatory Design 
  
• Tourism Asset Mapping 
  
• Land Use Planning 
  

Jacquelyn Strager

Jacquelyn Strager is a research coordinator with the Natural Resource Analysis Center, in the Davis College. She works on various applied research efforts, including site specific projects in West Virginia and more regional analyses across the Mid-Atlantic Highlands and beyond. Her project work focuses on natural resource, watershed, and environmental issues with a geo-spatial context, making use of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and associated technologies.

Research Expertise

• Spatial Analysis
• Participatory GIS
• ARC GIS Online Asset Mapping

WVU School of Art and Design

Design is a process of researching and innovating solutions to opportunities identified. It works well in collaboration and its methods can be shared with communities. Design offers aesthetic skills and organization skills, both visual and contextual to help a group track and realize goals. The most basic goal of design is to improve an existing situation, be it environmental, behavioral, or communication. For communities, this could mean devising projects that can improve the life of the community or populations within the community. The School of Graphic Design helped the community of Scotts Run in its first steps toward realizing its vision by developing a history museum and trail, branding an arts and music row, packaging projects that can be proposed to groups, funders and grants organizations to realize more steps. 

Team Members include:

Donald Kent Kerr

Assistant Professor of Graphic Design,  College of Creative Arts School of Art and Design 

Donald “Kent” Kerr began teaching at WVU in 2022. He specializes in branding and identity systems, community-driven design, and commercial production and his research focuses on community identity and development and exploring the role design thinking plays in community engagement.

Through his research and professional practice, Kent focuses on community-driven design research, developing creative placemaking solutions, and helping communities find, visualize, and solve their own unique design and development challenges.  

Research Expertise

• Community-driven Design

• Design Education

• Graphic Design

• Design Thinking