Empowering Small Minnesota Communities

Short Term Tasks 

Empowering Small Minnesota Communities’ Short-Term Tasks: Time-Limited, Discrete Projects that Strengthen the Projects’ Funding Proposals.

The Short-Term Tasks pathway is an opportunity for communities to request a time-limited, discrete task related to infrastructure. These tasks should further the community’s ability to apply for and secure needed investments. 

Complete this form to express your interest in undertaking a short-term project

This pathway is nimble and anticipates a project scope of work that will take no more than 10 hours of time for a graduate student research assistant at the University of Minnesota to accomplish. Given its short duration, projects proposed for Short-Term Tasks do not go through the same vetting and selection process as longer-term project ideas (Specific Project) or deep community-engaged design thinking initiatives (Community Strategies). We see this pathway as providing needed support to communities for strategic pieces of work and products that allow them to make a stronger case for their request for infrastructure funding. 

Given the discrete, short-term nature of the work, Short-Term Tasks does not help to identify project funding sources. Instead Short-Term Tasks include creating materials that support and strengthen the community’s project funding efforts. 

The scope of work should define a project that can be accomplished by one graduate student working approximately 10 hours over one to four weeks. 

Skills and experience for the research assistants supporting the Short-Term Tasks pathway include:

  • Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
  • Secondary data analysis (e.g., demographic data from U.S. Census Bureau)
  • Report writing
  • Environmental justice assessments
  • Project management
  • Designing public participatory processes
  • Data visualization

Examples of Short-Term Tasks include: 

  • Small scale community engagement planning, stakeholder analysis
  • Estimating waste flows, including recyclables and organic waste
  • Quantifying flows of tourists/visitors
  • Collating definitions of “rural” used by federal agencies
  • Mapping floodplains
  • Mapping parcel ownership along hiking trails