This grant provides ongoing support to Benjamin Dubin-Thaler, the founder of BioBus, and the team of 25 community scientists, educators, and nonprofit experts. BioBus started as a state-of-the-art science lab visiting schools in New York City to provide science opportunities aimed at K-12 students. BioBus brings a science field-trip-like experience to under-resourced schools and community groups, and has grown to include afterschool and weekend programs, summer camps, and paid high school and college research internships. Grant funds will allow BioBus to serve more than 115,000 diverse students (over half of their students identify as Latina/o/x and over a quarter as Black) from the Lower East Side to Harlem, as well as other locations in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island, and explore a possible national expansion, while building annual financial support from NYC and New York State governments.

This grant supports Christopher Caltabiano at the Council for Economic Education (CEE). That organization helps teachers convey economic concepts and skills to K-12 students.  The goal is to provide valuable life skills and to encourage a diverse range of students to study economics at college. Grant funds will allow CEE to make progress on these efforts through four main strategies: recognizing innovative teachers with Sloan Teaching Champion Awards ($5,000 to each teacher and $2,500 to their school to support economics education); disseminating successful pedagogies by, for example, running three-day “boot camps” for teachers; motivating diverse student populations by working directly with high school students; providing a web tool for administering tests, analyzing performance, and tracking progress; and developing innovative and inclusive online learning materials.

Founded in 2016 through a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and housed at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, the New York Network Initiative for Conservation Science (NY-NICS) offers access to expert conservation science researchers and state-of-the-art instruments to cultural heritage institutions across the city.  Anchored in material science and chemistry, conservation science as a field is broadly engaged in applying contemporary imaging and analytic techniques to questions of the history of artistic practice, which can range from the adoption of new materials over time to the creative processes of individual artists. Led by Marco Leona, NY-NICS has spearheaded partnerships with 11 key NYC cultural institutions since its founding, including the Brooklyn Museum, the Frick Collection, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the American Museum of Natural History, and the New York Public Library. This grant joins the Mellon Foundation in its support for the continued operation and expansion of the NY-NICS, allowing it to hire additional staff, expand the network further, and grow its list of partnerships with a particular eye on important but less well-resourced cultural institutions in New York.