University of Iowa Initiative for Sustainable Communities hosting upcoming focus group

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The University of Iowa's Initiative for Sustainable Communities is holding an upcoming focus group as part of its Workforce Retention project.

Through the project, urban and regional planning graduate students are working with the city of Cedar Rapids to better understand what keeps people in the city.

The group's mission is to help the city better retain its 25 to 40-year-old workforce by "gathering, interpreting and synthesizing community-based research on worker preferences," according to its website, www.crwrp.com.

Students are now looking at what other cities have done when it comes to workforce retention, said Jeremy Endsley, one of the graduate students who is part of the project.

Participants can take the survey in both English and Spanish online here. The group also has collected results to an open-ended survey asking participants what would keep them in town forever and what they most like about the city, for example.

Eventually, the group will make recommendations to the city based on its findings.

The focus group will be held from 6:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Feb. 27 inside Beems Auditorium B at the Cedar Rapids Public Library, 450 Fifth Ave. SE.

For more information, call Misty Rebik at 319-849-8597 or email misty-rebik@uiowa.edu.