Life in Fairfield, Iowa
Photos: Paul Delisle
One of the Best Small Towns in America
Innovative, Entrepreneurial, and Sustainable
Our campus is located in peaceful Fairfield, Iowa, the perfect small town to study, raise a family, enjoy nature, or escape from the busy demands of larger cities. Fairfield has frequently been featured in the national media as a great place to live, earning distinctions such as one of Iowa’s “Great Places” and being dubbed “America’s most unusual town” by Oprah. The city supports an engaged and eclectic community of artists, entrepreneurs, and families. Fairfield is truly unique; it has come to be known as Iowa’s most creative and eclectic small city and there really is no place like it in the world.
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Small Town, Big City Vibes
You may be surprised to discover that a city like Fairfield exists tucked away between cornfields and rolling hills. In fact, Fairfield often feels like a metropolitan community with a diverse community, in large part due to the students our University attracts from all across the world.
Fairfield residents tend to be spiritual, creative, and entrepreneurial with a focus on health and sustainability. Fairfield is home to many startups and small businesses, with over $200 million of venture capital invested locally, including multiple local solar installation companies and tech startups.
Fairfield offers a vast selection of entertainment, community, and dining options, with the local Sondheim Theater for the Performing Arts the go-to theater for live performances in Southeast Iowa. Fairfield Iowa has even been named ‘Iowa’s most restaurants per capita’ in 2016 by the Des Moines Register, with 30+ restaurants in town.
“Half Sedona vibes, half Asheville vibes, Fairfield, Iowa, is a hard-to-describe kind of place. For starters, out of cornfields and swaths of soybeans pops up the world’s largest training center for the Transcendental Meditation technique. Start-ups and small tech companies dot the 10,000-person town …” Read more
“The club car of Amtrak’s California Zephyr was full of Amish families happily and loudly playing Uno as the train rolled west toward the Mississippi. I was heading to Fairfield, Iowa, a town of about 10,000 that’s been called the world’s largest training center for Transcendental Meditation, a form of silent mantra meditation with an estimated five million practitioners worldwide…” Read more
“Since 1969, census data show Iowa’s metropolitan areas have gained nearly a half million people, while smaller cities and rural places have lost more than 171,000 residents. But Fairfield has prospered, particularly in recent years. Between 2010 and 2015, the city saw a 4 percent population gain — a rate that rivaled the growth of some of Iowa’s much larger metro areas…” Read more
Healthy and Active Community
Fairfield supports a healthy, active community with First Friday ArtWalks and events on the first Friday of each month, and a lively farmers market on Wednesday evenings and Saturday mornings. Fairfield residents also enjoy a brand-new recreation and sports complex featuring an indoor and outdoor pool, exercise equipment, an indoor track, a hot tub, sauna, yoga classes, basketball courts, batting cages, and more!
Whatever you enjoy doing, you’ll find it here.
Healthy and Active Community
Fairfield supports a healthy, active community with First Friday ArtWalks and events on the first Friday of each month, and a lively farmers market on Wednesday evenings and Saturday mornings. Fairfield residents also enjoy a brand-new recreation and sports complex featuring an indoor and outdoor pool, exercise equipment, an indoor track, a hot tub, sauna, yoga classes, basketball courts, batting cages, and more!
Whatever you enjoy doing, you’ll find it here.
Find Your Inner Peace While Surrounded by Nature
If you enjoy the outdoors, Fairfield’s 17-mile loop trail is perfect for walking, jogging, and mountain biking. Fairfield is home to 12 city and county parks, featuring a variety of ecosystems including lakes, wetlands, prairie, and woods, with scenic views during all four seasons. With our exclusive consciousness-based education and the Transcendental Meditation technique, Fairfield’s beautiful and peaceful nature offers the perfect get-away environment to rest, recover, and re-discover your inner self, and you can do this all while starting a new career path by earning your Master’s Degree in Software Development from MIU.
Recently named by Smithsonian Magazine as one of America’s best small towns, Fairfield is big on culture and thriving on creativity. Fairfield lives like a metropolitan community, earning distinctions such as one of Iowa’s “Great Places” and being dubbed “America’s most unusual town” by Oprah… Read More
“Over the past half-century, most of Iowa’s rural counties have seen a population and economic decline. Fairfield, however, earned the nickname Silicorn Valley during the dot-com boom of the late 1990s and early 2000s, highlighting the presence of dozens of tech and programming companies within its small confines. It’s been touted as the Most Entrepreneurial City in Iowa and the Most Entrepreneurial City in America of its size…” Read more
“It’s an unassuming town, surrounded by rolling farmland, that has gained fame for both its abundance of startup companies and its abundance of Transcendental Meditation practicers. It’s also full of amazing architecture, notably by George Franklin Barber and Barry Byrne…” Read more
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