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RCP Scholar Defines Properties to Preserve Chaska’s History
When Angela Kohrt bought a house in downtown Chaska a few years ago, she didn’t know it held a century-old secret. Thanks to a Resilient Communities Project (RCP) partnership with the City of Chaska, she discovered her house was built from salvaged brewery materials and may have hosted a prohibition-era speakeasy in its basement.
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RCP 2025 Summer Projects Recap
Every year RCP Summer Scholars are selected to collaborate with government partners through various projects that will better meet community needs and innovate change.
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RCP 2025 Summer Poster Session
On September 16, the Center for Urban and Regional Affairs (CURA) hosted a Summer 2025 Graduate Research poster session to showcase the exceptional work of our graduate students. The gathering brought together community and local government partners to celebrate student research, which is essential to our university-community partnership model.
This summer, RCP graduate students worked on 6 projects, including partnerships with Hennepin County, the City of Chaska, and New Brighton.
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Project Spotlight Video: Shoreview Multifamily Housing Outreach
Multifamily housing units will soon make up half the population in the City Of Shoreview, yet these residents are not well represented on the City's citizen advisory boards. Learn how RCP connected the City with a Humphrey School of Public Affairs Civic Engagement course to research and develop innovative strategies to engage multifamily residents (including a board game!).
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ESMC Spotlight: Reimagining Parks and Trails in Chisago County
For the past year, RCP and colleagues from the University’s Minnesota Design Center have been collaborating with staff, residents, and stakeholders in the Chisago County communities of Harris, Lindstrom, and Center City as part of the University’s Empowering Small Minnesota Communities (ESMC) program.
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Faculty Spotlight Video: Dr. Susan Galatowitsch
RCP Faculty Spotlight: Meet Dr. Susan Galatowitsch. Hear her experiences leading projects with RCP, including her latest project on building a resilience-based site assessment tool with Washington County, Minnesota.
Read the final project report: A Resilience-Based Site Assessment Tool for Ecological Restoration Planning in Washington County by Ashley Petel. -
Meet the 2025 Summer RCP Scholars
Each summer, RCP selects several graduate students as RCP Summer Scholars and hires them for a 25–50% graduate research assistantship appointment over the summer (May–August) to collaborate with local government staff and community leaders on a high-priority research project.
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Student Spotlight Video: Nuzhat Fatima
Interested in our research assistantship programs? Hear Nuzhat Fatima share her experience as an RCP Scholar last summer where she developed an Electric Vehicle (EV) Guide for Municipalities in partnership with Metropolitan Council of the Twin Cities.
Read her final report: A Guide to Electric Vehicles for Municipalities: Twin Cities Metropolitan Area
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New Property Condition Scorecard to Save Blighted Duluth Houses
RCP students create a new property scoring metric for the City of Duluth, showcasing their final project to stakeholders.
Aging buildings left in disrepair while affordable homes remain scarce.
This is a familiar situation for many cities as they try to attract and support a growing population. It’s a particular challenge for the City of Duluth, where nearly 75 percent of housing units are more than 46 years old and nearly 44% are more than 76 years old.
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Students Analyze Population Density Role in Edina’s Climate Action Plan
Originally appeared in CTS News, November 12, 2024
When the City of Edina wanted to know whether its 2030 population density targets were sufficient to meet its transportation and climate goals, it turned to a group of students with the University of Minnesota’s Resilient Communities Project (RCP).
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New Tool Helps Local Governments Protect Natural Resources
Graduate student Ashley Petel developed a site assessment tool that helps local governments determine land resilience and restore ecological health.
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RCP Project Wins APA Award
An RCP sponsored capstone project won the American Planning Association-MN Chapter’s Outstanding Student Project for "To Acknowledge and to Celebrate: Indigenous Placemaking on Hoocak and Dakota Homelands."
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Over 75 Small MN Communities Selected in First Round of ESMC program
Dozens of communities in every part of the state are already benefiting from the University of Minnesota’s new Empowering Small Minnesota Communities (ESMC) program.
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From RCP Student to RCP Project Lead
Ten years ago, Alex Mollenkamp was in her last semester of college at the University of Minnesota when she participated in an RCP class project that gave her the confidence she could build a great career.
“RCP helped solidify that municipal engineering is the type of work I want[ed] to do,” she said. “It made me realize, yeah, I do like this. It's interesting, it's relevant, and it’s something I want to stick with.”
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How Can MN Cities Plan for Extreme Heat?
An Interview with the Met Council's Eric Wojchik
Record high temperatures are making headlines across the country this summer. According to the MN Department of Health, extreme heat events in Minnesota "are expected to become more common, more severe, and longer-lasting as our climate changes."