Minnesota State University Moorhead receives 2026 Minnesota's Future Award. Posted September 25, 2026 Literacy Lab model expands from eight student fellows in Moorhead to teacher preparation programs across Minnesota The Minnesota Business Partnership has named Minnesota State University Moorhead's Nibbe School of Teaching and Learning the recipient of the 2026 Minnesota's Future Award, recognizing its leadership in a growing statewide effort to better prepare future teachers to teach children to read. For 20 years, the Minnesota Business Partnership has recognized schools and organizations making gains in literacy and approaches that can be replicated across Minnesota. Minnesota continues to face a significant literacy challenge, with too many of our students moving through school without the grade level reading skills they need to succeed. But it does not have to be that way. Schools across Minnesota are showing what is possible when educators use evidence-based instruction grounded in the science of reading. Monroe Elementary School, a previous Minnesota's Future Award recipient, is one example of a school that has strengthened its approach to literacy by changing how reading is taught. Literacy Labs build on that same principle by starting with future teachers. The model pairs teacher candidates with elementary students for supervised, one-on-one literacy tutoring. Candidates learn how reading acquisition occurs in their university coursework and then immediately put that knowledge into practice, using student data and structured literacy practices grounded in the science of reading to guide instruction. Minnesota State University Moorhead became the first Literacy Lab pilot site under the leadership of Dr. Erin Gillett. Eight Early Literacy Fellows worked with students in Moorhead Area Public Schools, providing structured literacy instruction grounded in the science of reading. Across two semesters, the fellows delivered 637 tutoring sessions to 59 students in kindergarten through third grade at no cost to participating schools. Students improved through the program, while teacher candidates gained practical experience assessing students, planning lessons, and delivering evidence-based reading instruction. "Our candidates learn how reading research translates into classroom instruction, and then they sit across the table from a child and put it into practice," Gillett said. "They make real instructional decisions, see the results firsthand and enter their own classrooms with experience teaching children to read." "Literacy Labs take what future teachers are learning in the classroom and give them the opportunity to prove it in practice," said Archie Black, retired CEO of SPS Commerce and co-chair of the Minnesota Business Partnership Education Committee. "Students receive individualized support, teacher candidates become stronger instructors, and we are building a model that can be replicated across Minnesota. That combination is what makes this work." The statewide Literacy Labs initiative is led by Dr. Lucy Payne and Jane McDonald Black, and both have brought the vision for Literacy Labs to Minnesota after seeing the model in practice and recognizing its potential to strengthen teacher preparation. That vision is now expanding rapidly. Following MSUM's initial pilot, additional educator preparation programs joined the work in spring 2026, including the University of Minnesota and Southwest Minnesota State University. Another group of universities will participate during the 2026-27 academic year, bringing the model to roughly one-third of Minnesota's teacher preparation programs. The work has also helped inform state policy. Gillett and Early Literacy Fellow Isaac Martin testified before the Minnesota House Education Policy Committee in support of legislation requiring teacher candidates to complete a supervised literacy field experience aligned with Minnesota's reading standards. The measure passed unanimously in both chambers and was signed into law. "Strong reading skills open the door to everything that comes next for a student," said Allison Gettings, CEO of Red Wing Shoes and co-chair of the Minnesota Business Partnership Education Committee. "If we want better outcomes for Minnesota children, we have to make sure teachers enter the classroom prepared to teach every child to read. Literacy Labs bring together higher education, schools, and the business community around that shared goal, and the progress we are seeing gives us a big reason for optimism." The $50,000 Minnesota's Future Award will support MSUM's continued work to strengthen the Literacy Lab model and expand opportunities for future teachers to gain meaningful, hands-on experience teaching children to read. About the Minnesota's Future Award The Minnesota Business Partnership established the Minnesota's Future Award to: * Highlight programs demonstrating that all students can succeed; * Celebrate the work of educators, students and families; and * Elevate successful academic strategies that can be replicated across Minnesota. The award reflects the Partnership's longstanding commitment to improving educational outcomes and preparing Minnesota students for future success.

SPS Commerce introduces ai-powered network intelligence for supply chains. September 16, 2026 SPS Commerce, the leading intelligent supply chain network, announced a new wave of product innovation that combines agentic AI with the intelligence of a network trained on more real trading partner activity than any other, giving brands and retailers the data foundation to move from reactive supply chain management to proactive operations. Spanning fulfillment, onboarding, analytics, and supply chain visibility, the new suite of capabilities helps customers scale with confidence and make better and faster decisions across trading relationships. The company also announced the general availability of MAX, its agentic AI supply chain offering, across its fulfillment customer base of tens of thousands. As Allen Thompson, Chief Operating Officer of RIP-IT shared, "As a small, high-growth brand, we're leaning heavily into AI to expedite efficiency and insight. We've gone deep with MAX and have already saved countless hours and hundreds of thousands of dollars." SPS also unveiled it has completed several waves of its all-new MAX-powered customer setup, by pairing its proprietary network intelligence with agentic capabilities. MAX is now assisting the customer onboarding process for many customers, including pre-sale context and account provisioning, so SPS teams can focus more on understanding the specific needs of the customer to ensure a successful relationship. "At some point, every data source and every tool a business runs on is going to need an AI interface. If it doesn't have one, that business will be left behind," said Slava Syrota, Chief Technology Officer at Ecentria. "Two years ago, we told our engineering team to experiment with any AI tool they wanted and tell us what worked, and that head start is exactly why we've been able to move so fast with solutions like MAX today." SPS' AI product innovations come as supply chain leaders increasingly adopt artificial intelligence while seeking clearer returns on those investments. According to Gartner, more than half (55%) of chief supply chain officers are unclear about the return on their AI investments, even as AI accounts for 67% of supply chain digital investment. SPS Commerce is meeting that moment by pairing new agentic AI capabilities with the intelligence of a network built on more than 300,000 trading relationships, 750M+ annual transactions, and 400+ system automation partners. By combining the SPS network and AI, brands and retailers can work with technology that was built to understand how supply chains function. "Artificial intelligence has the power to change how supply chains operate, but its value depends on the quality of the data and intelligence behind it," said Mike Svatek, Chief Product Officer at SPS Commerce. "Our proprietary network gives customers something they can't build on their own: AI informed by the relationships, transactions, and operational intelligence that exist across the SPS network. That allows customers to move faster, scale more confidently, and solve problems before they become costly." The announcement includes several new and expanded capabilities designed to help brands and retailers operate more quickly and proactively - and with greater visibility - across their supply chains. * MAX - The agentic intelligence layer within the SPS network is now generally available following an early access program that informed the product through hundreds of thousands of AI interactions across thousands of customers. MAX guides customers through simple and complex supply chain needs while also identifying key anomalies, preventing errors that might turn into costs and is grounded in how trading partner relationships behave. MAX is initially available for Fulfillment and Visibility Management, with rollouts to Revenue Recovery and Decision Intelligence to come. * Fulfillment: Agentic Customer Onboarding - AI is now embedded across fulfillment onboarding, from contract close to first live transaction. An Onboarding Agent has already moved more than 300 customers to supplier readiness. During testing, a Validation Agent unifies real-time network data, retailer and supplier maps and the history of past trading partner setups with best practices from SPS' most experienced consultants, resolving errors an average of 29% faster; consultants review and approve every recommendation before it's applied. The result: brands and suppliers reach full compliance with a new trading partner within 24 hours. * Decision Intelligence - An expansion of SPS Analytics that connects sell-through, inventory, and supply chain signals from across a brand's retailers into a single trusted view, organized around the decisions brands make every week: assortment, inventory placement, availability, and forecasting. Brands catch stockouts before sales are lost, flag the items and locations that need attention, and act on margin risk in time to capture revenue and avoid cost. A high-quality, retailer-normalized data foundation reduces the work required to prepare and reconcile data, so analyst time shifts from managing data to making the decisions that move sell-through and margin. * Visibility Management - Connects ERP, warehouse management, transportation management, and carrier systems into a single real-time view of purchase order status. Combined with MAX, Visibility surfaces potential issues including "non-events," the silence that signals a problem before they impact revenue and automatically brings suppliers into the resolution process.