December: Happy Holidays from Envision Utah—thanks to our supporters! Valley Visioning upcoming public workshops: times and dates detailed for several Utah County locations. Blog post: Utahns feel that planning for growth is extremely important. My Education, Our Future outreach numbers and updates detailed.
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November: Valley Visioning kickoff—public workshops and release of public input survey. Utah Education Solutions videos: highlighting the great things happening in Utah education. Together with Heart+Mind Strategies, Envision Utah is working with the Maricopa Association of Governments (MAG) to complete a values study as a precursor to their next regional transportation plan. Envision Utah CEO Robert Grow traveled to Washington D.C. to receive the "Leader for a Livable, Equitable, and Sustainable America" award from Partners for Livable Communities.
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October: Valley Visioning stakeholder kickoff to introduce co-chairs, detail visioning process, and workshop to discuss which issues are most critical for the future of the county. College student survey shows 44 percent considered a career in teaching but ultimately chose otherwise. 2018 Common Good Awards—thank you and recap.
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September: Press conference with Governor Herbert, Superintendent Syd Dickson, and Teacher of the Year Aaryn Birchell to issue a plea for former teachers to return to the classroom. Gail Miller, Cowboy Partners, and Kids On The Move to receive 2018 Common Good Awards. Attend the Move Utah Summit.
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August: This year's Common Good Awards will be held on October 15 at the Grand America Hotel. Our keynote speaker, UVU President Dr. Astrid S. Tuminez, will share her story of rising from extreme poverty to become an international leader in the tech industry. She'll also share her thoughts on Utah's position in the global market – and what that means for the fastest growing county and university in the state. Join UDOT, UTA, MAG, WFRC, the Utah Department of Health, and Get Healthy Utah on Sep. 26 from 7:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. for the Move Utah Summit.
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July: Density is a big deal lately, but rather than focusing solely on density, we should focus on how a project is designed. As of July 1, 2018, all water heaters sold or installed in Utah must be ultra-low NOx. This recommendation from our Clean Air Action Team will have big impacts on improving our air quality. Together with our teacher initiative task force, we narrowed a list of over twenty strategies to eleven key solutions and broke them up into four overarching approaches to handle Utah's teacher shortage: recruit, retain, and recover teachers, and elevate the teaching profession.
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June: The Envision Utah education team spent some serious time crunching some data to get a clearer picture of the Utah teacher shortage. They found that over the last decade, Utah has seen a significant decline in the number of new teachers coming from university teaching programs. They also found that getting more of these traditionally trained teachers is critical to having a healthy teacher workforce for our students. Phase 3 work is set to begin on the Point of the Mountain visioning effort. It will involve several different strategies to make the vision for the region a reality.
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May: Envision Utah would like to extend a special thanks to everyone who made the 2018 Spring Breakfast another record-breaking success. Our panelists discussed the importance of collaboration on the proposed inland port project, and what our actions now will mean for future generations. Envision Utah's second annual Quality Communities Academy was another great success – a packed room of students, city councilors, planning commissioners, and other attendees at our various broadcast locations, listened to the academy speakers discuss the fiscal sustainability of centers, growth trends, the elements of centers that make them desirable places to live, and the benefits of well-planned centers.
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April: Envision Utah will hold the second annual Quality Communities Academy next month. It will feature some of the most knowledgeable planners, designers, community leaders, and other Utah professionals. Dr. Dana Suskind, Found and Director of the Thirty Million Words Initiative detailed some of the science behind early brain development in a Freakonomics podcast. Parents play a huge rule in their children's early brain development and education, and Envision Utah is committed to ensuring that all Utah kids are have the educational foundation they need to succeed.
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March: Envision Utah was featured at the new City Blocks exhibit at the Leonardo Museum. The exhibit uses Legos to help visitors think like a city planner and consider what goes in to making a beautiful, livable, and sustainable city. The exhibit uses data from Your Utah, Your Future to highlight where we are as a state and where we are likely headed in areas like air quality, recreation, transportation, and more.
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February: Envision Utah held its first teacher initiative task force meeting. The group discussed teacher shortage numbers, why college students don't choose teacher as a career, what keeps teachers in the classroom—and why they leave, and messaging strategies to change Utah's cultural perception of the teaching profession. Envision Utah also facilitated the kickoff of the the Clean Air Implementation Team with business, community, and government leaders to discuss strategies to clean our air.
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January: After months of public input and analysis, Envision Utah finished Phase Two of the visioning process for the Point of the Mountain. The resulting vision combines preferred elements from each scenario and packages them into a vision based on what the public wants. Phase Three will be the final phase and will explore funding options for the needed infrastructure and economic development. In addition, we've recently charted building permits across the Wasatch Front and found an interesting change in our current marketplace. Since the recession, more than half of our new housing units have been townhomes, apartments, and condos—a huge change from traditional single-family home development.
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