Photo: High School Students Discover STEM Careers
Photo Credit: COD / CC
Published April 7, 2021
The Tennessee Conservative Staff –
Ten schools across the Chattanooga area have been awarded over thirty thousand dollars in STEM grants, thanks to the Electric Power Board and Tennessee Valley Authority.
Teachers were able to apply for up to $5,000 in areas that focused on the environment, energy, career development, and community problem-solving. Some even included pandemic-related projects.
After receiving over 600 applications, EPB and TVA chose the ten schools to get grants totaling up to $36,000. Each of the ten was awarded $5,000 or less.
Jeannette Mills, the executive vice president for TVA, said, “TVA is committed to supporting STEM education to help develop today’s students into tomorrow’s engineers, scientists, and IT professionals. It’s inspiring to be able to contribute to the innovators of the next generation.”
Chattanooga Central High was given $2,500 in a grant to help students learn about electric flow and assembling a personal computer.
“Students will learn about thermal compounds, heat transfer, bridging circuits, and shorting out the motherboard. They’ll disassemble the computer as well. Past students have told me they’ve helped fix a loved one’s PC with this knowledge,” said Nathan Dawson, a Central teacher.
$5,000 in grant funding went to Saint Jude Catholic School for the purpose of building a solar-powered greenhouse.
A teacher from Saint Jude, Lucinda Millard, said, “Our intention is to integrate solar panels to make a net-zero energy system for operating the pumps and fans required for hydroponic gardening. We’ll also collect water from rain barrels to circulate through our irrigation systems.”
Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic School will be using their $2,500 award to fund a Weather and Energy project.
Catherine Clifford, a school educator, said, “This will be an invaluable tool for our students to experience data collection and analysis related to renewable energy sources and weather using analog and digital instruments. Students will have access to project-based learning materials to record precise measurements of indoor and outdoor weather conditions in their environment and learn how to generate accurate forecasts.”
Lookout Valley Middle High is using a $3,500 grant for their ZSpace project, according to educator Kevin Spann.
“ZSpace is a computer system that allows students to view and manipulate creations with 3D glasses. The program combines both augmented and virtual reality. Their creations will appear to be floating in front of the ZSpace laptop,” Spann said.
Lakeview Middle received a $5,000 grant that they are going to use to provide computer science courses to their 6-8 graders for the first time.
LMS teacher Evonne Hackett said, “Our dream is that our STEAM space will become the hub for Robotic Clubs, Girls Who Code, Hackathons, and more.”
Calvin Donaldson Environmental Science Academy will be using $5,000 to teach students coding, and Stone Creek Elementary will be using $1,000 to create a virtual kindergarten.
TVA awarded a total of $800,000 in grants across their seven-state territory. That includes nearly 200 schools and over 70,000 students that will be impacted. The TVA STEM website has a complete list of all grant recipients.
