A small town in South Dakota has become a model of community planning, thanks to an inspired high school assignment and continued leadership of local youth.

Young college graduates increasingly find that the jobs they can find don't require the diplomas they worked long and hard to obtain.

In Bemidji, Minnesota, a town with a history of angry race relations, a few well-placed Ojibwe words have opened the way for mutual trust and respect.

More than 340 rural leaders from across the country gathered in St. Paul, Minnesota, in late June for the 2011 Gathering of the National Rural Assembly. Participants networked and discussed a wide array of rural – and more broadly American – issues: education, green energy, socioeconomic development, and many topics of rural policy.