ISSUED: 28 February 2024
MEDIA CONTACT: Cecelia Mason
SHEPHERDSTOWN, WV — Shepherd University’s Seeding Your Future Initiative (SYFI), which holds science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics (STEAM) conferences and workshops for middle school girls and high school students, has been awarded a $5,000 grant from the West Virginia Space Grant Consortium to further serve students in the Eastern panhandle of West Virginia.
SYFI will use the additional funding to make a Steam Resource Center to create more opportunities for those who do not have the means to come to Shepherd’s campus. Seeding Your Future serves the Eastern panhandle of West Virginia, which includes Berkley and Jefferson counties, both where racial diversity is higher than in other parts of the state.
The Resource center would provide “classroom kits” that teachers in area schools, including homeschool families, can check out for their students. The kit would have equipment and instructions for subjects like biology, physics, and geology kit, and lesson plans, worksheets, and other instructional materials. The materials in the kits will be state specific, measurable, realistic and time bound (SMART) with an outcome-based objective with a documentation plan.
Some of the topics covered by the kits will include geology maps and rocks and minerals; physics electrostatics and circuits; chemistry chemical identification; and forensics hair/fiber analysis. The SYFI wants feedback from teachers including new kit ideas and, possible instructional materials for current kits.
Seeding Your Future plans to host summer workshops so teachers can learn how to utilize the kits in their classrooms. Workshop details will be announced at a later date.
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