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Future Fellows Impact: Evaluation Report
Samaddar, Sushmita
Samaddar, Sushmita
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Abstract
Kansas Future Fellows brings together cohorts of leaders across the state, whose work intersects with the lives of children and families, to engage in futures thinking, foresight, and innovation in pursuit of program aims. In this evaluation report, we sought to understand the impact of Kansas Future Fellows on Cohort 4 participants. Our evaluation revealed insights from several data sources, including application information, participant responses to an activity conducted at the beginning and end of the program, and an exit survey. Cohort 4 participants entered the program with existing systems-level framing of challenges, like workforce shortages and fragmentation, and opportunities, like alignment and cross-sector collaboration. Between the start and end of the program, participants demonstrated transformed thinking around concrete action strategies. Exit survey results demonstrated higher-confidence responses (i.e., “very confident” and “extremely confident") in participants’ perceptions of their skills and abilities in operating in complex systems. Upon exiting the program, participants expressed a shared sense of belonging to a community of early childhood leaders in Kansas, the ability to identify specific people across roles and organizations they could turn to for thinking through complex challenges, and confidence in maintaining connections after the program ends. Findings suggest that Cohort 4 of the Future Fellows program culminated in a usable and enduring peer network of early childhood leaders who will leverage their connections to solve complex challenges that impact the lives of children and families in Kansas.
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Date
2026-05-01
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Center for Published Partnerships and Research, University of Kansas
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This item contains archived web content.
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Keywords
Futures thinking, Foresight, Innovation
Citation
University of Kansas Center for Public Partnerships and Research. (2026). Future Fellows Impact: Evaluation Report. All In For Kansas Kids. https://hdl.handle.net/1808/39346