Iowa BIG North students present practice projects

By James Grob, jgrob@charlescitypress.com

High school senior Sam Kiewel said he was a little nervous at first. After all, he was leading a presentation to a handful of important local officials.

Then he remembered why he had chosen to become a part of Iowa BIG North.

“I wouldn’t get the opportunity to speak in front of the mayor from just a math class,” Kiewel said.

Kiewel and fellow IBN students Skylar Houdek, Aleaha Hagen and Jacquelyn Rutherford were in the first of five groups to make a pitch Monday at the IBN headquarters in the North Grand Building. The Charles City High School students were presenting research and information they had compiled on their first practice project of the 2019-20 school year.

A group of community VIPs were on hand to listen to the presentations and ask questions — including Charles City Mayor Dean Andrews and Iowa state House Minority Leader Todd Prichard, among others.

The Charles City Chamber of Commerce recently presented IBN with a real issue — how to get teens more actively engaged in the community.

As an example, the chamber told IBN students that it presents “Party in the Park” throughout the summer every year, and hundreds of young kids and older adults attend, but the crowd is missing the teenage group. The chamber wondered if maybe the community needs more activities for teens, or if perhaps there is a way to get kids more involved in volunteering in the community.

IBN facilitator Donna Forsyth said the students had just five days to put a presentation together.

“It was more about the process of how a team works,” Forsyth said. “They had to do the communication and manage the process.”

The presentations went on all afternoon Monday. The students presented ideas, answered questions and listened to feedback. Now they will process that information and identify the initiatives they want to work on.

Iowa BIG North participants will collaborate on solutions to problems they identify themselves, or that are brought to them by the community and businesses.

“The kids are now deciding what they want to spend their semester doing,” Forsyth said. “They’ll choose what businesses or other entities they want to work with, and what are they passionate about.”

Iowa BIG North, now in its fourth year, is a coalition of students from seven regional high schools who are pushed to make connections with businesses that have problems to solve.

Sometimes it’s a marketing problem, or something that needs development, like an app. Sometimes it’s something else entirely. Then, teams of two or more students dedicate a semester to finding a solution to the chosen problems.

In 2016, the Charles City, New Hampton, Osage and Rudd-Rockford-Marble Rock school districts were awarded a $25,000 grant to launch Iowa BIG North, which was inspired by Iowa BIG in Cedar Rapids. BIG is an acronym for “Big Ideas Group.”

Since then, the Turkey Valley, North Butler and Riceville school districts have been added to the team, in part due to an additional STEM BEST Partnerships grant the program received. The districts share resources to offer an educational experience centered on student-passion, student-led, problem-based and authentic learning.

Kiewel, who started in IBN last year, said the program has been a boost for him.

“IBN has been has been super cool for me,” he said. “When I started last year, I wasn’t really getting it, but now that we’re in a flow, we’re getting work done on initiatives that are all passion-driven.”

IBN student Skylar Houdek said he’s seen the same kind of results.

“After joining IBN, my social skills got a lot better, as far as talking in front of people, communicating with people has gotten a lot better for me through this program,” Houdek said. “I want other people to know about our program and what we do here.”

Kiewel said that he does a lot of networking, and he thinks it’s “super-good” for him. He admitted there were a few tense moments in front of the audience at the start of Monday’s presentation, but once his group got started, he was fine.

“I’m feeling more and more comfortable now speaking in front of strangers,” Kiewel said. “Now I feel like I can get information out there better, have a conversation, sneak a few jokes in there.”

The students said they were excited to be starting another year of Iowa BIG North.

“I think it’s going to be a good year. We have a lot of new faces in our space, and new people from the other districts like New Hampton and Osage — all of them,” Houdek said. “I’m fired up to get ready and get going.”