UW President to Speak at National Conference on Public

University of Wyoming President Ed Seidel will highlight the Wyoming Innovation Partnership (WIP) during a conference of national leaders in higher education, industry and government Thursday, Sept. 29, in Denver.

P3•EDU is an invitation-only event that highlights best practices for public-private partnerships in higher education. Hosted this year by the University of Colorado-Denver, the two-day conference features discussions including “The New Era of Public-Private Partnerships in Higher Education”; “Partnerships to Expand Academic and Geographic Reach”; “New Solutions for Student Success”; and “The Future of Higher Education.”

Seidel will participate in a panel titled “Enabling Economic Development Through Campus 2.0,” speaking along with leaders from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the University of Texas-San Antonio. Seidel has played a key role in developing WIP along with Gov. Mark Gordon, Wyoming community college presidents and other state agencies.

Through the partnership, Wyoming is leveraging funding provided by the American Rescue Plan to align higher education institutions to better support the growth of the state’s economy through targeted collaborative programs in agriculture, energy and tourism, as well as in computing and entrepreneurship across the state. Before becoming UW’s 28th president in 2020, Seidel was the vice president for economic development and innovation for the University of Illinois System.

Other university leaders scheduled to participate in P3•EDU come from institutions including the University of Florida, George Mason University, the University of Michigan, the University of Oklahoma, Quinnipiac University, Unity College and the University of Virginia. Among the scheduled speakers are Colorado Gov. Jared Polis and Nasser Paydar, the U.S. Department of Education’s assistant secretary for postsecondary education.