A progressive partnership between Lee’s Summit R-7 School District, Metropolitan Community College, and the University of Central Missouri is reshaping the way students experience education at the new Missouri Innovation Campus. The 2 + 2 program, which is a collaboration between both industry and academic partners, focuses on learner outcomes in an immersive and rich real-life workplace experience. Students from 16 to 30 are working in a classroom and workplace towards the same degree.

The building takes on a sense of academia-meets-Google with a commitment to facilitate incidental contact that results in collaboration between students, teachers, and higher education faculty: Learning and teaching happens everywhere. We partnered with Gould Evans on this facility that supports a diverse and flexible program to evolve as future careers are invented. Programs including networking, engineering, medical, bio medical, graphics, hospitality, and cybersecurity are broken out across quadrants on two floors for ease of wayfinding.

This facility is designed to be used by all disciplines and programs, in that it is programmed like a higher education facility. There are dedicated labs for specific programs and adjacencies to flexible spaces for a changing curriculum. Industry partners are encouraged to use hoteling spaces and the conference center, to see and be seen by students of the facility. Industry leaders in the hi-tech medical records field, logistics experts, and global engineering firms are a part of the day-to-day functions of this building.