Executive Summary

When the Buffett Early Childhood Institute was established at the University of Nebraska in 2013, it was presented with a remarkable challenge—to transform the lives of Nebraska’s young children and their families based on the best research available.

In our first decade, the Institute met this challenge and capitalized on the opportunity by convening and building relationships with diverse partners across the university, the state, and the nation. Together, we began to establish a common understanding and shared agenda for transforming early care and education in Nebraska. Today, we are pursuing a variety of collaborative initiatives designed to improve alignment across systems with responsibility for ensuring the healthy development and learning of young children.

We continue to learn from what we do—discovering new ways of working together and new directions for the work ahead. This commitment to learning, which is evident in all our work, is highlighted in this executive summary. Detailed information about our key accomplishments is described in the chapters that follow.