This grant provides five years of support to the Fund for the City of New York (FCNY) to offset administrative and organizational expenses associated with the Sloan Awards for Excellence in Teaching Science and Mathematics, an annual awards program that honors exceptional math and science teachers working in New York City’s public high schools. Each year FCNY conducts a city-wide search for superb nominees from all five boroughs. Seven winners are selected by an expert panel of distinguished New Yorkers and winners are then honored at a city-wide celebration presided over by the chancellor of the NYC Department of Education. Winners receive a cash award of $5,000 and their schools each receive an award of $2,500 to augment their educational offerings.

This grant supports efforts by the Council for Economic Education (CEE) to attract a more diverse pool of individuals to economics by exposing precollege students to high-quality economics education. Grant funds support the Alfred P. Sloan Teaching Champion Awards, an annual program for recognizing innovative, effective high school economics teachers in the New York City metropolitan area. Winners receive $5,000 and their schools receive an additional $2,500 to enhance the economics curriculum. Winners are also celebrated at CEE’s annual Visionary Awards dinner each October, an event popular with leaders in business, education, economics, and the media. Additional grant funds support a series of three-day training boot camps and other online and in-person professional development programs that reach over 55,000 teachers per year, two-thirds of whom teach in schools serving students from low-income families. Last, CEE hosts the New York Economics Challenge, an annual quiz-bowl-style competition that helps students discover and develop a passion for economics. The grant’s funds support these and related activities for a period of three years.

In 2008 Ben Dubin-Thaler, a passionate science educator and entrepreneur, purchased an old New York City bus, outfitted it with state-of-the-art microscopy, developed a curriculum, and started visiting local schools. The result was the BioBus, a fully mobile research laboratory that brings a science field trip to school and community groups, with a focus on delivering high-quality science education to underserved communities. Since 2008, the organization has grown considerably, adding and outfitting a second bus and establishing two local community education centers (called BioBases), one on the Lower East Side and one in Harlem. BioBus also increased the breadth of their educational services by launching an internship program for high school and college students and a 12-week after school learning curriculum for interested middle and high schoolers. Since its founding, BioBus has brought innovative, fun science education to an estimated 250,000 students at more than 500 New York City schools. Funds from this grant support efforts to expand the number of students participating in BioBus programs over the next three years while creating the physical, fundraising, and evaluation infrastructure to ensure sustainable future growth. Funded activities include efforts to increase BioBus’s capacity to provide science research and mentorship opportunities; complete a three-year evaluation plan of the internship program that will provide data and insights to maintain program excellence while expanding capacity, and create a sustainable business plan for increased government support.

The STEM Saturdays program, launched in 2017 under the direction of George Delagrammatikas, professor of mechanical engineering at the Cooper Union, aims to engage talented, at-risk New York City high school students in engineering activities. The curriculum focuses on teaching in-depth understanding of microcontroller applications and computer programming skills and includes lunch time presentations on the college admissions process, career development, intellectual property, and patent law. Students work with electronic circuits, switches, resistors, digital inputs, LCDs, DC motors, photocells, RFID modules, and IR receivers. They also learn to program computers to create a “smart home,” with connected lighting, HVAC, and motion alarm systems; and work in teams to develop a design project using engineering principles to solve current, real-world problems. This grant provides three years of operational support for the continuation of STEM Saturdays. In addition to continued operation of the program, grant funds will support a series of program improvements, including increased training of the mentors, and more timely access to instructional materials. In addition, Cooper Union will formally link STEM Saturdays with their long?running Summer STEM program to create a progression of STEM college readiness support for underserved students; formally incorporate both programs into their undergraduate admissions strategy to increase diversity within their STEM enrollment; develop the financial and institutional support for long?term sustainability of the program; and engage other New York City STEM outreach programs to expand opportunities for students across New York City.