Panthers Exploring Fields of Opportunity: Providing Faculty Time and Resources to Reach out to Iowa Schools and other Educational Institutions

This poster will detail a unique effort that our Educator Preparation Program and College of Education has made in the last two years to provide faculty an innovative way to interact with various education stakeholders across our state. Faculty received dedicated time and resources to leave their classrooms and explore innovative, diverse and exceptional projects and programs our PK-12 partners and other educational institutions use to impact the profession. These visits were then shared with the program to inform our current practices. The program was a very simple concept, but has been very successful. Nearly 75 faculty across the University made arrangements to visit more than 25 schools and districts and other institutions from an hour to five hours away from campus. The initiative received broad support from our University Provost and President and was also shared with our State Board of Regents. Furthermore, in our debriefing sessions there was broad agreement that the visits were mutually beneficial for faculty and the various hosts across the state which were able to share with our faculty innovative instructional practices and diverse educational contexts. The initiative was so successful that it was run this last Fall in 2017 with similar participation and current plans are to support a smaller scale Panthers Exploring Fields of Opportunity this Spring 2018 semester.