Improving teacher quality in P-12 mathematics is a national need, and many universities and schools are working to address it. With the support of the National Science Foundation (NSF), twelve math and science institutes across the country are helping P-12 teachers strengthen their capacity to support students' learning. These NSF Institutes operate under the leadership of STEM university faculty, representing colleges of arts and science as well as colleges of education. The strategy is to build capacity by improving teachers' content knowledge, pedagogy, and leadership skills. One such venture is The Math in the Middle Institute Partnership (M2) at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL). As part of their efforts to understand the place of rural in M2, the research team systematically interviewed the 63 rural participants from the first three cohorts in summer 2006. During those 30-60 minute interviews they asked participants about the contexts in which they teach, their professional roles and responsibilities, and circumstances that influence their teaching. They soon found that teachers they called "rural" did not necessarily refer to themselves that way, and sometimes even teachers from the same town did not agree on whether or not to call themselves rural. (Contains 1 figure and 1 footnote.)