As part of its plan to increase enrollment at the University of Montana, professors are leaving campus and heading out into the community.

"It's an initiative that the University of Montana started about a year and a half ago," We Are Montana in the Classroom Program Manager Nathalie Wolfram said. "We place UM faculty members and graduate students in the K-12 classrooms to serve as role models and get kids excited about career pathways and opportunities in higher education."

It’s summertime now and most K-12 facilities are closed for the summer so professors will be hosting discussions at the SpectrUM science center in downtown Missoula. The first of these events is coming up Friday, June 24.

"We have four faculty members from two different departments: Anthropology and the Department of Modern and Classical Languages and Literature," Wolfram said. "These four professors all focus on language and linguistics. They are going to be bringing a whole set of activities having to do with storytelling and alphabets. It's really a chance for kids to discover different languages."

SpectrUM will be free for all ages on Friday for the event. Another group of professors will be back at SpectrUm on July 22nd.

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