NASA Awards Grants For High School Science Education
NASA will award about $4 million in grants to public school districts, state-based education leadership, and not-for-profit education organizations to support academic excellence in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education.
The first round of awards is valued at $3.1 million. Each award is expected to leverage NASA’s unique contributions in STEM education, enhance secondary students’ academic experiences, and improve educators’ abilities to engage their students.
A total of eight proposals were selected for funding to school districts and organizations in California, Maine, New York (2), North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, and Texas. The selected proposals illustrate innovative approaches to using NASA-themed content in support of secondary-level teaching and learning, with a particular emphasis on high school education.
The proposals were selected through a two-step process, merit-based, peer-reviewed competition. The awards have a two-year period of performance, and range in value from $350,000 to $400,000.
The Summer of Innovation Capacity Building Awards are valued at $1 million. They will be shared among institutions that showed student participation in summer learning experiences helped academic performances in the following school year. The Summer of Innovation Capacity Building effort also looked for programs with the potential to be a model for middle school education.
Each funding proposal leverages NASA content in STEM education to build successful programs with a special interest in reaching underserved students and strengthening the bridge between out-of-school and in-school learning programs.
There were 16 proposals selected for funding representing the District of Columbia and these 13 states: California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia (2), Maryland, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oregon, Texas, Virginia (2), Washington and Wisconsin.
For a list of selected proposals in both of these award categories, visit:
http://nspires.nasaprs.com
For information about the NASA Education program, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/education
