True believer: dreaming the impossible dream, YSU President David Sweet is executing a vision for revitalization in Youngstown.(The University Scene)

Inside Business, March, 2005 by Lepro, Sara

David Sweet achieves impossible dreams.

It's why images of Cervantes' well-loved protagonist, Don Quixote, adorn his walls at Youngstown State University. The school's president considers the romantically idealistic character his patron saint.

For so long, economic rebirth in Youngstown has been considered an impossible dream. But the man who founded Cleveland State University's Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs is beginning to change that attitude.

Many are becoming believers.

"David has helped bring people together," says Margaret Murphy, executive director of a community group that's working with Sweet. "There's trust and there's communication and not the normal skepticism of the past."

Now Sweet turns...