Iowa City schools developing project-based learning ‘Center for Innovation’

IOWA CITY — The Iowa City Community School District is exploring how to deliver project-based learning opportunities to students with their new Center for Innovation — with classes possibly being piloted as early as next fall.

Superintendent Matt Degner said the Center for Innovation is being created to expand student learning opportunities to help kids be “college, career and life ready.”

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Last spring, the district began engaging about 60 educators and leaders in the business community to talk about what programming at the Center for Innovation could look like that is “highly experiential and individualized,” Trace Pickering, who is “semiretired” and consulting with the district on the project, said at a school board meeting earlier this month.

Pickering was the co-founder and executive director of Iowa BIG, a project-based learning center in Cedar Rapids that opened in 2013. Pickering also is a consultant on City View Community High School, a new magnet school opening in the Cedar Rapids Community School District Wednesday.

The Center should help students gain “skills to succeed” in a rapidly changing world, Pickering said.

During the community sessions, participants talked about ways the Center for Innovation can “give kids the opportunity to find that spark, that thing that makes them tick, what they want to do with their life and then how the school can support them.”

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Pickering said he envisions the Center helping students and professionals build relationships, “so that we increase the chances they will see Iowa City and the Corridor as a place they want to stay.”

Dawn Bowlus, founder and director of the Jacobson Institute at the University of Iowa, said the Center for Innovation will be an “enhanced” way for students to explore career paths.

The Jacobson Institute works with teachers, schools and partners in the community to develop opportunities for students to practice problem-solving, collaboration and risk-taking and become critical thinkers.

“We know that project-based and problem-based learning is really important,” Bowlus said. “Entrepreneurial thinking — the need to understand how to solve problems, how to be adaptable and how to have that kind of grit and perseverance — helps youth develop their confidence and their ability, whether they go on to get a two-year or four-year degree, apprenticeship or whatever their path looks like.”

That’s why student voice is an important part in creating this program, Bowlus said.

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“From a workforce development point of view, I think it’s really important,” Bowlus said. “Our business community knows our youth are our future workforce. The more we can help young people see they are part of the community will really empower some students to consider staying here, staying in Iowa, and they can make a difference here.”

At the Center for Innovation, students will work with businesses in the community to solve problems — and Bowlus said business professionals likely will be just as inspired by the students.

Iowa City schools Superintendent Degner said in addition to gathering student input on the program this year, the district will explore funding sources. Educators will spend time touring other project-based learning programs like Iowa BIG, City View Community High School and Venture Academics, the project-based learning program in the Linn-Mar Community School District, the Waterloo Career Center and Waukee APEX.

Iowa City’s Center for Innovation will be located at 301 ACT Dr. in Iowa City — previously known as the Tyler Building. It was purchased by the district last year for $8.7 million from ACT with Physical Plant and Equipment Levy funds. The annual property tax levy can be used to maintain school buildings, complete site improvements and purchase school equipment.

ACT is a nonprofit and national leader in college and career readiness that provides assessment tests to students.

“Full steam ahead on the Center for Innovation,” Iowa City school board member Maka Pilcher Hayek said. “It’s a priority because we’re in competition with neighboring districts more than ever and with private schools more than ever. This will be one more thing that makes us the best.”

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