Business partners offer first pitches of the year to Iowa BIG North

By Kate Hayden, khayden@charlescitypress.com

The doors to Iowa BIG North’s headquarters were wide open on Wednesday afternoon.

Teachers and school administrators from four area districts leaned in and lined the back walls of the room, as a crowd of 60 high school students watched business leaders pitch new projects.

It was day one of Iowa BIG North’s Partner Palooza, and nine business representatives had 15 minutes each to convince teenagers why their perspective was needed.

“As we continue to grow, we have more business partners involved, which means more opportunities for kids,” said Donna Forsyth, Iowa BIG North leader for Charles City students. “Now that we’ve been through it, we’re going through it for our second time, so we’re tweaking and making those changes.”

In the second year of the program, one thing that hasn’t changed is Iowa BIG North’s mission.

Students from four regional high schools are still pushed to make connections with at least two businesses that each have a problem to solve — sometimes a marketing problem, or something that needs development, like an app.

Teams of two or more passionate students will dedicate a semester to working on the chosen problems.

“We’re further ahead with getting the initiatives started sooner rather than later,” Forsyth said. “That’s just as any business startup. You need to get some practice in there and experience some of those things first.”

The program’s biggest growth comes from New Hampton students. Twenty-five new students have joined, with six returning students to participate for the first semester of the school year.

Returning students may stay involved in a project they worked on last year, or they can decide to start on a new initiative that a business pitched this Wednesday or next week, during the second Partner Palooza.

By the end of next week, students will be deciding between 24 project pitches.

“Hopefully we’re going to see more students involved in initiatives that are crossing district lines,” Forsyth said. “It provides challenges, and that’s a great thing. … We use technology such as Zoom for communication. Those are real challenges, and real-world.”

The businesses that took part during the 2016-2017 school year were impressed with students’ critical thinking skills and new ideas, said Mike Kuennen, Iowa BIG North’s New Hampton leader.

“It’s a fresh set of filters. Students who don’t have a preconceived notion of, ‘no, they can’t do something’ — that is one of the advantages of our younger generation,” Kuennen said. “Professionally, they come in and they are very open-minded, and willing to ask, ‘why do you do something in a particular way?’

“When they see a new process, the questions are very authentic and make the professionals in the businesses think, ‘OK … Just because we’ve been doing something for 10 or 15 years, doesn’t mean that’s how we should continue to do that.'”

Businesses that had partnered with students last year have returned, even when some projects didn’t result in a single product, Forsyth and Kuennen said.

“It’s more about process over product,” Forsyth said. “In the real world there are deadlines, and we have to be really careful about putting our focus on that, because then we lose focus of the process over product.

“Even if students weren’t able to reach an end product, the process of how far we came, and the interaction and collaboration we had with the businesses — they loved it,” she added. “They’re back to pitch again.”

Kuennen said, “It’s an opportunity to develop a relationship with students within their community, and explain to them, ‘Oh, you’re not interested in this? Here are the other career paths we have to offer.’

“They’re developing relationships at a young age and creating a path for them to come back and possibly work for them, and live within our communities,” he added.

“We couldn’t be happier with the student engagement and the business partner engagement.”

Four visitors from outside the districts involved sat in on Wednesday’s session, and Kuennen said businesses interested in learning more can observe next week’s session.

For more information, email Kuennen at m_kuennen@new-hampton.k12.ia.us.