MOULTRIE, Ga. — The Colquitt County Archway Partnership continued its efforts in 2018 to improve the community as Moultrie and Colquitt County look ahead to growth from the arrival of a medical college.

Among the changes is a new Archway professional, Sarah Adams, who along with Operations Coordinator Michelle Elliott brings resources from the University of Georgia to bear on local issues identified by the partnership’s leadership.

Adams became the new Colquitt County Archway professional in early February 2018, meeting with local Archway partners and previous Archway professionals to adjust to her new role and catch up on past projects in the community. Before joining Archway, Adams served as the community outreach director for the Moultrie YMCA.

This past summer, faculty from the Archway Partnership hosted a planning retreat where Colquitt County community leaders gathered to participate in a facilitated discussion about real or perceived community issues that impact the quality of life in Colquitt County, according to a press release from the Archway Partnership. A retreat accountability meeting was established for all funding partners, including the vice president of Moultrie- Colquitt County Economic Development Authority, president of the Chamber of Commerce and the local Archway professional. This meeting continued momentum from the retreat and served as a way to personally touch base with funding partners to show the progress made on community priorities, the press release said. This group will continue to meet quarterly to address new areas for improvement.

A newly formed marketing issue work group (MIWG) — created by the Archway Partnership to engage a group of invested community members in forming a strategy to promote community events, organizations and people — requested projects that tackled the priority of community collaboration and unity for the future.

One of these projects includes an improvement plan for the local Tom White Linear Park, which is a 7.3-mile walking trail that links downtown Moultrie to the local airport. The Archway press release said parts of the trail need to be improved with lighting, resurfacing and additional signage, and a student from UGA’s College of Environment and Design will be working on this project.

In addition, the group has announced the winners of the hashtag contest: #MoultrielivingMoultrieloving and #PACKedwithlove. The many organizations represented in the MIWG can use these to represent a unifying “brand” for the work of the group, the press release said.

Colquitt County has also been chosen as the new site for the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine campus, which has given the Colquitt Archway executive committee the opportunity to plan for community growth. The Carl Vinson Institute of Government will provide guidance on a housing plan to accommodate future students, staff and faculty.

The Archway Partnership is a unit of Public Service and Outreach at UGA. It connects Georgia communities to the full range of higher education resources available at the university to address critical community-identified needs. Colquitt is one of 13 communities selected for the Archway Partnership since the program began in 2005.