Get to know me
Dr. Bo Beaulieu is Professor of Rural & Regional Development (in the Department of Agricultural Economics) and is the former director of the PCRD (April 2013 – May 2020) and Assistant Director of the Purdue Extension Community Development program (February 2013 – June 2019). Bo has played a major role in the launch of a number of innovative national research and Extension programs across the nation including the National e-Commerce Extension Project, the Stronger Economies Together (SET) program in partnership with USDA Rural Development, and the Food Assistance Research Program in collaboration with the USDA Economic Research Service. More recently, Dr. Beaulieu has spearheaded, in partnership with Purdue Extension and the University of Kentucky, the Rural Economic Development Initiative (REDI) in the North Central and Southern regions of the U.S. with funding from USDA Rural Development. Since joining Purdue in 2013, he’s given leadership to Purdue’s EDA University Center, the development and implementation of the Hometown Collaboration Initiative, the launch of the Rural Indiana Stats website, and the Rural Opportunity Zones Initiative.
Dr. Beaulieu is the recipient of a number of key awards over the past several years. In 2014, he received the Distinguished Rural Sociologist Award from the Rural Sociological Society, the Secretary of Agriculture Honors Award, and was selected as an inductee in the George Washington Carver Hall of Fame for Public Engagement at Tuskegee University. In 2016, the National Association of Community Development Extension Professionals honored him with the Distinguished Career Award while the Community Development Society paid tribute to his professional activities with the Community Development Achievement Award in 2018.
Bo is the author/co-author of over 50 journal articles or book chapters, four edited books and dozens of applied community/regional development curriculum modules. He is the past president of the Rural Sociological Society and the Community Development Society. Bo received both his M.S. degree and Ph.D. degree in Sociology (with a specialty in community development) from Purdue University.
Featured works
- “Extension Community Development: Building Strong, Vibrant Communities.” Journal of Extension, Volume 52, Number 5 (2014).
- “Breaking Walls, Building Bridges: Expanding the Presence and Relevance of Rural Sociology,” Rural Sociology, Volume 70, Issue 1, pp. 1-27 (2005).
- “Laying the Foundation for Employment: The Role of Social Capital in Educational Achievement,” The Review of Regional Studies, Volume 34, Number 3, pp. 260-287 (2004).
- Kumar, Indraneel, Lionel J. Beaulieu, Andrey Zhalnin and Chun Song (2020). “Occupational competitiveness analysis of the U.S. transportation and logistics cluster.” Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board (January).
- Chacon-Hurtado, Davis, Indraneel Kumar, Konstantina Gkritza, Jon D. Fricker and Lionel J. Beaulieu (2020). “The role of transportation accessibility in regional economic resilience.” Journal of Transport Geography, 84 (April).
- Dobis, Elizabeth, Lionel J. Beaulieu and Indraneel Kumar (2020). “The study of poverty in places: Scope, scale and space.” Chapter 2 in Rhonda Phillips, Eric Trevan and Patsy Krueger (eds.), Research Handbook on Community Development. United Kingdom: Edward Edgar Publishing, Ltd. (April).
Authored news
Both COVID-19 cases and deaths have begun once again to accelerate across the United States. Such trends are worrisome given that this “third” wave has no geographic epicenter, unlike the…
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act passed by the U.S. Congress in December 2017 included an important provision that brought focus to the economic challenges facing several communities still rebounding…
The Purdue Center for Regional Development (PCRD) has been providing the Economic Gardening program to second-stage companies in Indiana for the past four years. In light of the challenging times…