Penn State Smeal students help address rural gaps in food, health care, community

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Hall’s Market was the center of activity in tiny Snow Shoe, Pennsylvania, for more than a century until a raging electrical fire destroyed the building in 2020. 

A year later, the town’s medical center shut down. 

The back-to-back losses left residents with no convenient way to buy groceries or see a doctor.  

Enter students from "MGMT 365," a Penn State Smeal College of Business course that focuses on social entrepreneurship. 

“The idea was to work with Penn State Health collaboratively to find potential ways to increase food access, because fresh food access and health care access work hand in hand,” said Travis Lesser, an instructor in corporate innovation and entrepreneurship and the director of Smeal’s Center for the Business of Sustainability. He also founded Bellefonte-based Appalachian Food Works, a food hub that works with Central Pennsylvania farmers to increase sales channels. “If people are eating healthier, they don't have as much of a need for health care."

Physician Michael McShane from the Penn State College of Medicine and his medical students were already visiting the area regularly with the Lion Mobile Clinic and knew that residents were feeling cumulative effects from a lack of basic services.  

“It became very clear that if we wanted to make change in the communities that we were going to, we needed to think about it more broadly than just health care access,” McShane said. 

That led to the partnership between business and health, and Lesser made finding food-access solutions for Snow Shoe and the entire Mountaintop Community the main focus of his spring 2025 class. The project is continuing this fall. 

“If you can figure it out in Snow Shoe you can figure it out in other communities as well, and it could be potentially very impactful,” Lesser said.

First research, then solutions 

The Hall’s Market site, or “Hall’s Mall” as locals called it, included a hardware store, a bank, a Subway restaurant and the only grocery store in town. All are now gone, as is a former pharmacy and one of the oldest restaurants in town that served breakfast. 

U.S. Census Data from 2020 shows a population of about 700 people in the borough of Snow Shoe, and about 1,600 in the township. The area is about a 30-minute drive from the University Park campus. In the spring, four students visited to talk to residents about what they need and, more importantly, what they want.  

“Finding the best solution that fits is by getting to know them and getting to know what it means to live in that town,” said Emma Mori, teaching assistant for the spring semester of "MGMT 365."  

The class was divided into groups that researched various ideas including a community garden, working with local farmers, and mobile or brick-and-mortar food businesses. 

The fall course is focused on more specific plans, such as a mobile market and the feasibility of a federally funded health center. Students are also investigating other community priorities and the logistics of implementing their solutions.  

“I am very appreciative that the students are working on this,” said Mary Anne Raymond, a Snow Shoe resident and former Penn State employee. “If we do not have fresh fruit, vegetables, of course, even meat, it affects your overall health. You depend on this kind of food to be healthy and well for a long time.” 

It’s not just about the services

A Dollar General Market opened in Snow Shoe in May, bringing some groceries, some fresh foods and basic household items. But that didn’t fill all of Snow Shoe’s needs. For one, said Mori, Hall’s was much more than a place for residents to shop.  

“That was a sense of community for them,” Mori said. “There was a bulletin board there that had everything that was going on in town. They would run into their neighbors there.”  

That kind of interaction and access is important not just for physical health, but also mental health, especially in older residents who may not be able to make the 20- to 30-minute drive to shop outside of town. 

Research from Penn State’s Center for Healthy Aging, for example, has shown a positive connection between pleasant social interactions and cognitive performance in people between the ages of 70 and 90.  

Lesser pointed out that, unlike in some areas where food and medical access are lacking, poverty isn’t the issue in Snow Shoe. It’s simply that residents lost access to vital businesses and services. And they want to be part of the solution. 

“They're not looking for a handout,” Lesser said. “Quite the opposite.”

It’s good for the students, too

Students working on the project are getting a hands-on lesson in social entrepreneurship, which tasks founders with starting businesses that prioritize solving societal or environmental problems alongside financial health. 

“I think there was a sense of pride to be able to do real, meaningful, impactful work that, frankly, I don't know that they get out of a lot of other classes,” Lesser said of the spring cohort. 

Looking to build upon his collaborative efforts, Lesser called upon Penn State Sustainability’s Sustainable Communites Collaborative program director Ilona Ballreich, who said efforts like this one allow students to apply classroom lessons to community needs. 

“Through this process students become familiar with how our communities function, how they are governed, who are decision makers and how do communities arrive at certain decisions and/or tackle localized problems,” Ballreich said.

The two are working together on this semester’s project to allow the students to visit Snow Shoe and get to know the community firsthand. 

Students like Jaida Copeland, a senior studying corporate innovation and entrepreneurship, said the experience made her happy. 

“It's a heavy workload for the class, I'm not going to lie, but it's for a good cause,” Copeland said.  

The only real complaint from students? That the class is only a semester. 

“What I think we need to really take with us is the fact that we were the ones who were able to get the ball rolling (on this 'MGMT 365' project),” said Kenzie McGrath, who took the course last spring and graduated in May with a degree in corporate innovation and entrepreneurship.  

“It really changed my thinking in the sense of, what do I experience and what do I see every day that I can find a solution for to help, not just to profit," McGrath added.