Over the last two years, University of Georgia students and faculty members have worked with community leaders in Sandersville and surrounding Washington County to tackle some of the area's most pressing problems, among them, reversing a doctor shortage and improving air quality to meet federal standards. Their work is part of an effort, now in seven Georgia counties and soon to expand to an eighth, to link local communities with the university's vast resources. At a time when land-grant and research institutions across the country are seeking deeper engagement with their states and regions, the University of Georgia has repurposed the traditional agricultural-extension model for community and economic outreach. Its Archway Partnership takes the university into the community, where full-time staff members stationed in each participating county work with civic leaders to identify local needs and connect towns with expertise across the university and the state-university system. University officials say that Archway, which recently won a regional outreach award from the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities and now is up for a national prize, has significant benefits for faculty members and students as well, providing them with opportunities for research and hands-on experience through internships and service-learning projects. "Land-grant institutions were founded on the notion that scholarship could matter in daily life," says Arthur N. Dunning, the university's vice president for public service and outreach. "We're building on that heritage." Georgia is not alone in rethinking what it means to be a 21st-century land-grant university. The push to reinvigorate the mission of these institutions, founded to provide practical training in fields like agriculture and engineering to students of all economic classes, dates back nearly a decade to the release of a report by the Kellogg Commission on the Future of State and Land-Grant Universities. It called for a new "covenant" between public research universities and their surrounding communities and for making engagement central to the whole institution, not just a handful of departments or colleges.