It is a rare Cornell student who does not find the university's campus and environs beautiful and a great place to live for four years. But after graduation, the tide often changes: Diploma-wielding young adults rush to leave upstate New York in the quest to land jobs in an urban area.

This "brain drain" is detrimental to upstate New York's economy, says Kevin McAvey, a graduate student in Cornell's Department of Applied Economics and Management (AEM). So he has started a foundation to help reverse the pattern. The Upstate Foundation assists upstate businesses in attracting and retaining upstate graduating students.

Upstate New York is replete with businesses, but a large barrier to their growth is the availability of a quality workforce, both in production as well as management areas, says Todd Schmit, assistant professor of applied economics and academic adviser to McAvey.

The new foundation, which now focuses on the Syracuse area but is expected to branch out to all of upstate New York, has three initiatives.

The first is Upstate Connect, which puts upstate businesses directly in touch with colleges and universities. Using an online clearinghouse, businesses post job openings that get filtered, based on specific criteria, to individual schools. The goal, says McAvey, is to establish the missing link between businesses in upstate New York and colleges and universities in the area. "Upstate New York needs to be viewed as a region for job opportunities," said McAvey.

The second initiative, the Upstate Fellows Program, provides financial incentives for students to stay upstate. Right now, the foundation is working on raising money to provide $1,000 fellowships for students who accept jobs upstate for such practical living expenses as apartment costs.

Finally, the Shake Upstate Initiative targets specific neighborhoods for gentrification. Funds are used to work on efforts to make particular neighborhoods attractive to young professionals.

Schmit said that the Upstate Foundation attempts to engage local community leaders and economic development agencies, upstate firms and academic institutions so that "all the players are at the table."

To develop the foundation, McAvey tapped the know-how of many Cornell people, including directors and professors in AEM, City and Regional Planning, and Developmental Sociology, to give him the "the base I needed to undertake such a venture." The need for the foundation stems from studying such issues as regional specializations and availability of graduates for his master's thesis on agribusiness development and inter-industry linkages in New York state. "The foundation is not directly related to my graduate work, although my work is almost entirely focused on economic development in the upstate region," said McAvey, who expects his master's in May.

And how will the foundation be funded? "Overall, we are looking to philanthropists, universities and interested businesses/municipalities to sponsor the majority of the funds," he said.

Jill McCoy '09 is a writer intern at the Cornell Chronicle.