Earlier this fall, the University of Iowa Orchestra performed a concert exclusively for fourth grade students in the Iowa City Community School District. The annual event, staged in the UI's Voxman Music Building, attracted more than 1,400 students.

Almost 150 University of Iowa students in the UI School of Music's University Choir, Camerata, Women's Chorale ensembles recently performaned in the annual Choral Collage staged inside the award-winning Voxman Music Building. Performance is a core component of all of the academic programs at the UI School of Music. Its more than 30 ensembles, large and small, are filled with students pursuing their passion for making music on and off campus. The University of Iowa takes pride in the quality of our ensembles, but most of all, we care about the achievement of our students.

The Office of Outreach and Engagement at the University of Iowa partners with Iowa communities on dozens of projects each year. One of the most popular requests: public art. In fact, the office often receives more requests for public art than resources can provide. Thanks in part to a new residency program to train students in the intricacies of creating public art, boarded-up windows, concrete walls, and fertilizer bins will become canvases for large-scale public art projects in 10 Iowa communities this summer. One city also will welcome a large-scale, solar-powered sculpture to its downtown plaza. "Public art has been positioned as a driver of economic reinvestment," says Vero Rose Smith, associate curator at the UI Stanley Museum of Art and one of two faculty members working on the inaugural Grant Wood Public Art Residency. "It's hard to document; it's obliquely provable. But it does at the very least demonstrate a renewed sense of value and investment on an emotional level in the fabric of a place."