The inspirational view of the UI campus from my sixth floor office window lends itself to reflecting on the past while concentrating on the important events scheduled over the next two months.
Back in spring 1998, we would have been ensconced in preparations for Invent Iowa, one of the Center’s major spring events.
Young Iowans are still inventing and this year’s convention featured innovations from students across the state.
Then, we were also making preparations for our very first Advisory Board Meeting.
Now, we are focused on the Center’s 30th anniversary, which we will celebrate during the 2018 Annual Advisory Board Meeting. (We will have more about commemorating 30 years over the next couple of newsletter messages.)
In 1998, we hosted our 4th Wallace Research Symposium; today, we are counting down the days to the 2018 Symposium at the end of this month. The 2018 Wallace Symposium honors the legacy of Julian C. Stanley, founder of the Talent Search Model and promises to be an amazing opportunity for all who will be able to participate. Thanks to an agreement with the University of Iowa’s Division of Continuing Education, we will be video-taping all of the plenary sessions so that we can create a course that will be available to current and future educators.
Other highlights of our Phase III time period included welcoming the first class of our early entrance-to-university program, now the Bucksbaum Early Entrance Academy, along with the development and launch of the Iowa Online Advanced Placement Academy (IOAPA).
Then, and now, Professional Development is at the core of our programming. Having grown from just a few courses focused on teacher training in the very early days, to a full-blown professional development program that includes the State of Iowa Talented and Gifted Endorsement and coursework available online, makes our programming accessible around the world.
The summer of 2003 would be the last summer that we conducted professional development programming or student programming outside of the Blank Honors Center. Indeed, the year 2003 culminated with a ribbon-cutting ceremony in the late fall and we moved in to our new home in January 2004.
Our industrious summer program participants created a mural for the protective wall at the Blank Honors Center building site.
We presented a photo of the mural to Myron Blank, one of our founders, at the ribbon-cutting ceremony.
Stay tuned for Phase IV in June!