Project ECHO is celebrating its 10th year at the University of Wyoming. The program has put an international spotlight on UW.
ECHO uses virtual mentoring sessions to share specialist knowledge, connecting educators and healthcare providers with university faculty and with each other.
Canyon Hardesty is the director of community education and training for the Wyoming Institute for Disabilities, a division of UW’s College of Health Sciences. She said Project ECHO uses an "all teach, all learn" approach where participants learn from each other.
"If you think about Wyoming, there are experts in Wyoming living in very, very rural communities that are not located at the University of Wyoming," Hardesty said. "So we have educators who figured out how to do amazing things with students and with families to improve their academic outcomes or their health outcomes and ECHO provides a place for that to come together."
Cari Glantz, project coordinator for ECHO at UW, said the program is about "moving knowledge, not people."
"I've had educators who are maybe new to the field, and they're going into special education, and they felt nervous about it, and they said, 'Now that I have ECHO, I know I have this group that I can connect with, I can reach out to if I have questions and if I need supports,'" Glantz said.
Hundreds of research papers have demonstrated ECHO's effectiveness at reducing health disparities and improving outcomes.
This model for collaborative learning did not start with UW.
University of New Mexico faculty launched the ECHO model in 2003, and it came to Wyoming in 2014. Since then, UW's Project ECHO has become a global leader. As one of the world's first "superhubs" — a distinction UW shares with only the American Academy of Pediatrics, ECHO India and ECHO Northern Ireland — it has trained many of the 1,300 other ECHO hubs across the globe.
"We were one of the first four," Glantz said. "There's now 41 super hubs around the world."
Reaching that status was in no small part due to the efforts of Sandy Root-Elledge, the former director for the Wyoming Institute for Disabilities (WIND), which houses UW's Project ECHO.
In addition to positioning UW's ECHO as a superhub, Root-Elledge expanded ECHO's learning model beyond healthcare to education. That shift started at UW but is now a major component of ECHO programs around the world.
"Our team here at WIND and at the University of Wyoming ECHO was the first to translate the ECHO model from health into education back in 2014 and that was our Assistive Technology program," Glantz said. "That program is still up and running today."
Hardesty has been with UW's Project ECHO since its inception.
"Sandy left a legacy, but also managed to build what I think is a pretty phenomenal team of people … who really understand the importance of inclusion and community-based work in Wyoming," Hardesty said. "There's still some of us left, and a core — a very strong core — of people who will continue that work."
Root-Elledge was ousted from her position last fall during an administrative power struggle that rocked campus for several months.
Tensions between a new dean and college faculty boiled over in October last year, when Root-Elledge and other division leaders took part in a vote of no confidence in Dean Jacob Warren, a newcomer to Wyoming and the university who had been accused of nepotism, authoritarianism and mismanagement or interference with grant applications.
Within a day of that vote closing, Warren had removed Root-Elledge as well as Brant Schumaker, the director of UW's WWAMI medical education program.
In the fallout that followed, the Wyoming Institute for Disabilities lost at least a third of its employees to resignations. The UW Board of Trustees fielded complaints from students, faculty and disability stakeholders while UW President Ed Seidel and the dean himself were questioned by lawmakers about the university's alleged failure to tolerate dissent.
UW initially stood by the dean and defended his plans to restructure the college — an issue core to the original disagreements between faculty and administration — but ultimately removed the dean in January.
Schumaker was hired just a few months after his removal at UW to run Montana’s WWAMI medical education program.
Root-Elledge remains a celebrated figure in her field and was recognized by her colleagues, including Hardesty, with a Career Achievement Award in the spring. Root-Elledge declined to comment for this story.
Editor's note: This story has been updated to include Canyon Hardesty's full job title.
