High school engineering classes may be held at University of Iowa

IOWA CITY – High school may be coming to the University of Iowa's Van Allen Hall next fall.

Officials from the Iowa City school district, the UI and Kirkwood Community College are working on a plan to offer advanced courses for area high school students on the UI campus.

The classes would be part of the Project Lead the Way program – which focuses on so-called STEM curriculum, for science, technology, engineering, mathematics – and related to the Kirkwood regional education center planned for the area.

The center, which is to be located at the UI Research Park in Coralville, will be modeled after a similar facility in Monticello that offers specialty and college-level classes to high school students.

Voters in September approved a bond issue to finance Kirkwood regional education centers in Johnson, Linn and Washington counties.

The Johnson County center probably won't be ready for two years, Iowa City school district Superintendent Stephen Murley said, and officials were interested in how the concept could get started earlier.

The UI stepped up and offered space, he said, and the likely site is Van Allen Hall, which is home to the university's science education and physics and astronomy departments.

“We're really blessed to have the university as a partner in this,” Murley said.

The classes would be upper-level Project Lead the Way courses not currently available in area high schools, like digital electronics, biomedicine and aerospace engineering, Murley said.

As with the regional education center, surrounding school districts also could send students there. That's important, Assistant Superintendent Ann Feldmann said, because there may be only a few students in each high school interested in a course, and class sizes must be high enough to justify the program.

Murley said registration numbers are the most pressing detail that needs to be worked out before the program is a go. He's not sure what the magic number is, but they'll probably need at least somewhere nearing 20 students to make a class viable.

Feldmann said they also want students to take a couple more courses on campus so they spend a half-day there, as is the norm at the regional education center. How that would work still needs to be determined.

“A lot of this has really come together in the last two or three weeks,” Murley said.

The instructors could be from the high schools, Kirkwood or the UI, depending on the subject. The UI will provide the space, Kirkwood the equipment and Iowa City the students.

Murley said Van Allen Hall, which he toured last week, is perfect for the program. And Kirkwood will provide equipment school districts could never dream of affording.

The school district will need to pay to transport students to the UI campus and for a fee to Kirkwood, although the state reimburses some of that.

Some advanced high school students already take college courses at the UI, but the new offerings would be high school classes.  Feldmann said the UI is considering offering college credit for Project Lead the Way classes.

Murley said part of the appeal of the UI location is that students from one school, like West High, don't like traveling across town, to City High, to attend special classes and they'll usually sign up for other electives instead.