Dartmouth this month has launched a groundbreaking K-12 community partnership that aims to strengthen collaboration between Dartmouth and educators in the Upper Valley.
Formally known as the K-12 Community Dartmouth Partnership, it launched on Aug. 12 with a morning introduction at the Class of 1978 Life Sciences Center, followed by a daylong series of 12 workshops across campus.
More than 60 educators from 15 K-12 public schools throughout the Upper Valley of New Hampshire and Vermont participated in the "Ready, Set, TEACH!" program in Oopik Auditorium, which introduced the objectives behind the partnership.
"We're excited to have this opportunity to welcome all these teachers to Dartmouth, and we hope it will be the start of long-term relationships that will be mutually beneficial," Holly Roy, organizer of the program and assistant director for outreach and alliances in the Grant Proposal Support Initiative office, aka GrantGPS, told the audience assembled in Oopik Auditorium.
One of the objectives of the community partnership "is to create impact and grow knowledge. And we need to make sure that the bridges that we're building are available, and able to be accessed by all who want to access them," Charlotte Bacon, the associate provost for research development and alliances, said to the Upper Valley educators.
Karen DuBois, director of academics, engagement, and opportunity for the Lebanon, N.H., School District (SAU #88), who is also working with the community partnership, then introduced keynote speaker Rafe Steinhauer, an assistant professor of engineering in the Thayer School of Engineering, director of the Upper Valley Education Design Clinic, and a 2025 recipient of Dartmouth's Apgar Award for Innovation in Teaching.
Steinhauer's academic work explores "how these human-centered design principles can reshape education, really at every level, from our individual curriculum and instruction and pedagogy all the way through systems-level change," DuBois said.
The UVEDC offers a unique model, Steinhauer said, whereby teams of teachers and administrators from outside Dartmouth "learn some methods of design thinking and systems thinking, and work in a shoulder-to-shoulder partnership with Dartmouth students on school improvement projects."
To date, the UVEDC has completed 10 projects in nine school districts, and 30 teachers and administrators have participated, Steinhauer said. Among the projects, Steinhauer said, was a push to increase playtime for kindergarten students in the Hartland, Vt., elementary school, given the robust literature on "play in early childhood education." In the next two years, the UVEDC will grapple with the advent of AI in classrooms, Steinhauer said.
During the day, teachers fanned out across campus to take part in such workshops as Civics in Action: Teaching with the Youth and Government Program, Engaging Climate and Environmental Concerns Through Art, and Inclusive Pedagogies: Engaging With and Teaching about Indigenous Communities.
Carley Malloy, the senior program coordinator with the Native American Program, leads a discussion on engaging with and teaching about Indigenous communities. (Photo By Sophia Scull '25)
MaryLu Washington, a reading and writing specialist for grades K-4 in the Mount Lebanon Elementary School in West Lebanon, registered for a morning workshop on Active Learning with Primary Sources at the Rauner Special Collections Library and said she was glad to learn that Rauner "is open to the public." She had assumed that people would need special permission to use the collections.
"Anyone can come in to use the Rauner Special Collections," said Morgan Swan, the special collections librarian for teaching and scholarly engagement. Rauner staff want to broaden access to resources—both digitized and in-person primary sources—for teachers and students. "We really want to support you as much as we can," he said.
Discussion on how to broaden the relationship between Dartmouth and Upper Valley schools began a few years ago, Roy said.
She previously worked in the President's Office, before transitioning to GrantGPS in 2023 and taking on her new role in outreach and alliances this spring. GrantGPS supports Dartmouth faculty with their research and helps secure federal funding across every discipline. One of the key components that granting organizations look for is how authentically faculty engage with classrooms and students outside academia, she said.
This important element spurred her to put out the word campus-wide. "‘Who's interested in sharing knowledge and strategies with our K-12 partners here in the Upper Valley?’ People responded," Roy said.
The hope is that the partnership will be mutually advantageous for Upper Valley teachers and students and Dartmouth faculty, Roy said.
"Moving more into outreach—not just K-12 educators, but nonprofits and adult education through the public libraries—helps as our faculty connect to our neighbors and get their work outside of academia so it has a broader impact," Roy said.
Organizers anticipate that this summer's Ready, Set, TEACH workshops will be the first of other programs to come, although what they might look like is yet to be determined, DuBois said. One of the team's first jobs is to analyze the participant feedback from the Aug. 12 event with the long-term aim of better meeting community needs and forming closer connections between Dartmouth and Upper Valley schools and students, DuBois said.
"Envisioning what comes next will be what comes next," DuBois said.
Bacon said the organizers are grateful to President Sian Leah Beilock and the staff of the Office of the President, as well as the Dartmouth Center for Social Impact, Steinhauer and the Hood Museum of Art, for their interest and backing of the partnership.
"With the support of all of these different offices, as well as partners who would like to join this initiative, we can do extraordinary things together," Bacon said.