UGA student Cassidy Head, left, and Archway Partnership operations coordinator Sharon Liggett, right, present Dori Griffin, director of nursing at Archbold Grady hospital in Cairo, with the Connected Resilient Communities designation for Grady County outside the Archbold Living-Cairo long-term care facility. The facility was among the health-related projects the county completed with assistance from UGA to earn its CRC award. (Photo by Baker Owens)

ATHENS – Cassidy Head has always wanted a career where she could help people, and she’s working toward that goal at the University of Georgia. After she graduates from UGA, Head wants to become a doctor and work in rural Georgia. Before she does that, however, she is helping rural communities overcome challenges. This is part of a new undergraduate internship program at UGA.

Through the Elizabeth V. Wight Southwest Georgia Internship, she is working with communities in the region to address their most pressing concerns. Concerns like health care and wellness, youth issues, downtown development, workforce and other quality of life concerns. Head, a third-year biological sciences student from Hawkinsville, began the internship last year as the inaugural recipient. The UGA Archway Partnership facilitates the internship.

Elizabeth “Lib” and Neal Quirk provided a generous donation to support the creation of the internship. It is named in honor of Lib’s mother. Wight was a UGA alumna and Grady County resident who cared deeply about her family, friends and community.

“We’re so grateful to Lib and Neal for their generous donation to help UGA students build capacity for long-term connections with rural communities,” said Matt Bishop, interim vice president for Public Service and Outreach.

Since 2011, Grady County has completed over 150 projects in partnership with UGA. Lib Quirk said her mother was excited and proud when she learned about UGA’s presence in Grady County. She said, that working relationship helped spark the idea for the internship.

“We believed that bringing together southwest Georgia and the University of Georgia would be a wonderful way to honor my mom in a meaningful way and could potentially make a difference in someone’s life, or even many lives,” said Quirk.

As Archway celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, the Wight internship represents a new opportunity to address community-identified challenges. It will be from a more embedded perspective while also providing workforce experience for the intern. Wight interns will connect directly with community stakeholders, much like an Archway professional. They will work on specific projects that align with the community’s goals.

Head attended Archway Partnership executive committee meetings and met with community leaders and stakeholders. She gained insight into the issues they’re focused on and learned more about the Archway model. As a result, the collaborative team decided Head will focus her work on a project that helps recruit health care professionals for rural Georgia.

“Building rural communities in Georgia is important, and I’m really grateful for the opportunity to work in communities that are similar to where I grew up,” said Head. “I’m excited to combine my passion for public service and rural health care with helping communities in southwestern Georgia—and really, across the state—find solutions to some of the challenges they’re facing.”

Head spent last summer working on health care projects, in Cairo, to better understand the health care opportunities and challenges. That helped her design and plan a windshield tour of Georgia. It will serve as a pilot study for showcasing the rural health care landscape throughout the state. The goal of the tour is to provide students interested in rural health care with a sense of what working in a rural community would look like from a financial, social and medical facility standpoint.

“It’s just so important for students to have that community exposure to the key leaders and the key projects,” said Archway Partnership operations coordinator Sharon Liggett, who is overseeing Head’s work in the internship. “Cassidy is seeing that community development or community transformation doesn’t happen overnight. It really does take community investment and leadership to implement a project and see it through.”