KU News Release

KU doctoral student wins national award to fund study of rural community survival

LAWRENCE — Research by a University of Kansas student examining community survival in rural America has received national recognition.

Loralie Lynn Wiebold, a doctoral student in sociology, has won a $3,300 Robert K. Merton Award from the Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy of Rocky Hill, N.J., to support her dissertation research. Wiebold was one of 14 doctoral students selected nationally for a Horowitz Foundation research grant. Other recipients included students at the University of Cambridge, University of Oxford and Princeton University.

The Horowitz Foundation supports the advancement of research and understanding in the major fields of the social sciences. The Merton award specifically supports studies of relations between social theory and public policy. The foundation gives preference to research dealing with contemporary issues in social science and issues of significant policy relevance. Preference is also given to scholars in the early stages of their professional careers, particularly those completing research for their professional degrees.

Wiebold is studying efforts by county governments in Iowa and Kansas to deal with the forces of globalization — the loss of jobs and the outward migration of their young, educated population — and at the same time deal with an increasingly aged population in need of health care. Her dissertation is titled “County Government and Community Survival in Era of Globalization.”

Wiebold has traveled throughout Kansas and Iowa, interviewing more than 70 county officials in about 50 counties for her study.

“Over the past few decades, the closures and relocation of factories and fierce interstate competition in the global economy resulted in dramatic economic and demographic changes to the American heartland. Changes in agriculture also impacted rural states as the size of farms have increased, resulting in fewer people farming larger lots of land,” Wiebold said.

“Rural areas suffer the dual loss of people and jobs, resulting in higher poverty rates, a shrinking tax base and the subsequent inequities of services available to residents of rural counties.”

A major focus of Wiebold’s study will examine the impact that a continuing loss of people in rural areas has on the local funding of services such as health care and economic development. Her study includes budget data from all counties in Iowa and Kansas for at least three fiscal years (1999, 2001 and 2003 and 1997 for Iowa), focusing on local expenditures on health care and economic development.

Wiebold is writing her dissertation this summer and plans to graduate in spring 2008. She has accepted a visiting professorship at the University of Northern Iowa in Waterloo, where she completed bachelor’s and master’s degrees. She is the daughter of Dianae and Roger Wiebold of Walford, Iowa, a small community southwest of Cedar Rapids.

“The awards enabled me to travel to complete my interviews with county commissioners — helping with gas, lodging, food expenses. This was a costly project and the assistance received from scholarships/grants is of vital importance. The awards are also significant in assisting me to take time off from paid employment and focus on the actual analysis and writing of my dissertation this summer.”

This is the second award Wiebold has received this year to support her research. Earlier this spring, she received a $1,500 Morris C. Pratt Research Scholarship from KU’s Department of Sociology.

According to federal regulations for research involving human subjects, the counties visited and officials interviewed are confidential and will not be identified in her dissertation.

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