2024 STEM Grant Recipients

MINNDEPENDENT awarded STEM grants totaling more than $46,000 to 10 member schools for projects to be implemented during the 2023-2024 school year.

INNOVATION GRANTS

Annunciation School, Minneapolis
Growing a Strong STEM Future (Grades K-8)
This STEM grant project focuses on our K-5 STEM program to help enrich the units of study in our program of inquiry. The units of study of “Who We Are” and “How We Organize Ourselves” in kindergarten and 2nd grade where the focus is how our actions impact our community and environment. Students in these grades will also have the opportunity to plant, observe growth, and harvest from the gardens, hitting on the standards about life science, technology, the plant life cycle and structures, and additional units of study for our IB program. This project will be a catalyst for more tactile social justice awareness and action as we seek to partner with a local food bank to grow produce to donate. The tower gardens are hydroponic which will teach about sustainability. The gardens will allow for greater conversation within our school community about the importance of knowing where your food comes from as well as giving back to the greater community. This project is important for our school because we want to continue providing unique opportunities for students to engage with what they are learning – to see, touch, taste the fruits of their labor.

Avail Academy, Fridley
Real Equipment for a Real-Work Science Lab (Grades 9-12)
At Avail Academy High School, the best learning is when students are doing real work for real people who have real needs. This foundational value along with a desire for high-quality work is why we will be redesigning our science classroom into a 21st century lab space. That physical redesign also comes with a commitment to high-quality science equipment to support the real-world research happening in our science program. We currently partner with The University of Minnesota and Three Rivers Park District in urban stream studies. The lab equipment we purchase with this grant will increase the efficiency and accuracy of the real-work students are doing, which is especially important as they communicate results to the wider scientific community.

Cristo Rey Jesuit High School, Minneapolis
Increasing Access to Professional Hands-on STEM Opportunities for Cristo Rey Students (Grades 9-12)
Cristo Rey’s STEM grant project will support the Corporate Work Study Programming (CWSP), allowing 8 Cristo Rey students to work in the Ken Melrose Technology Lab (M-Lab) to: 1) help foster and grow students’ interest in STEM, encouraging them to pursue future STEM-related post-secondary and career opportunities; and 2) provide students with hands-on learning experiences in a professional position.
Cristo Rey’s CWSP provides early exposure to STEM career pathways and skill acquisition to successfully pursue post-secondary education and vocational opportunities in the growing STEM industry. As part of their CWSP coursework, students work (unpaid) in an entry-level job 5 days/month onsite at Cristo Rey or with one of 135 partner organizations. A team of 4 students share one job, each providing a full day of coverage Monday-Friday during the school year. This project will allow 8 students to work in the M-Lab where they will be trained on how to use state-of-the-art technology and use STEM skills developed through our STEM-focused curriculum. M-Lab student workers will also increase lab accessibility for up to 450 students annually, as student workers will supervise M-Lab activities and help train students and faculty on equipment use.

Nativity of Our Lord School, St. Paul
Nativity Robotics Program (Grades 4 – 8)
Nativity of Our Lord Catholic School’s STEM grant project is to develop a more robust and up-to-date robotics program in and outside of the classroom. Currently, the school uses LEGO MINDSTORMS EV3 robotics kits, which are no longer available for purchase or supported by LEGO, with fourth grade students in STEAM class. Developing a better program begins with updating technology, namely purchasing 9 LEGO Education Spike Prime kits to replace the outdated kits. These kits include standards-aligned experiences in their app and free training for educators. Transitioning from the old kits to the new ones keeps a similar structure for the robotics program while ensuring use of the most current technology. Finally, this program will help rebuild an after-school robotics opportunity at Nativity. The LEGO Education Spike Prime kits are used in partnership with High Tech Kids’ First Lego League. The league is open annually to 4th-8th grade students. The season consists of team practices and a regional tournament in January. Nativity will begin one team with the potential to grow. Students will take an active role in building and programming their robot for the robotics team since they will have experience using LEGO robotics kits in the STEAM classroom first.

Saint Francis of the Lakes Catholic School, Brainerd
Glorious Gardening (Grades K-8)
The Glorious Gardens STREAM project is a project that will enhance the K-8 grade curriculum in all STREAM areas. Science concepts for all areas of botany, hydroponic gardening, seed saving, composting, harvesting and other gardening concepts will be part of the learning curriculum while implementing the Glorious Gardens project. The students will be utilizing technology while utilizing different probes to test soil conditions for proper growth as well as graphic programming for the art components. The addition of the R for religion and the importance of taking care of the gifts in nature God has given to us as well as sharing our treasures with others. For the engineering component, the students will be designing and building a compost area as well as trellis areas for maximum growth in the designated garden area. The arts will be incorporated in numerous ways with creating aesthetically pleasing container designs for local nursing homes as well as graphic designs inspired from the gardens to be used in all marketing materials. The last component for the mathematics will be based on percentage yields, graphical analysis for seed growth and budgeting for future garden seasons.

St. Boniface School, Cold Spring
Share the Love of Engineering (Grades 3 – 6)
The “E” in STEM stands for engineering. And we want our students to love engineering and to inspire this love in each other through the sharing of knowledge. Our grades 3-6 students will learn the steps to the engineering process, take on engineering tasks (using materials funded by the g inspired by their current curriculums, and the unit will culminate in groups sharing what they have learned with other grade levels. This unit will cross the curriculum between science (engineering process and tasks attached to current units) and language arts (preparing presentations and public speaking).

Sunny Hollow Montessori, St. Paul
Hydroponic Growing Systems (Grades 1 – 8)
Sunny Hollow Montessori Elementary and Junior High students will have the opportunity to establish and utilize two separate indoor hydroponic growing systems. One system, housed in one Lower Elementary (grades 1-3) classroom, will be available to all Elementary students (grades 1-6), who will have the opportunity to participate in all aspects of planning, constructing, and maintaining this project. The second system, housed in Junior High (grades 7-8), will be planned and constructed by the students, who will then experiment with changing variables that result in new outcomes.

United Christian Academy, Bloomington
Jumpstarting Future Aircraft Construction (Grades 9 – 12)
For six years our school has taught the AOPA You Can Fly curriculum. The focus of this program has and continues to be on the growing pilot shortage. The success of this program in our school has motivated us to consider a completely new direction to our school – vocational education. We realize that in today’s job market it is a mistake to only emphasize a college education to our students. At the same time our school population continues to grow in numbers and in diversity. The aviation program has shown us that students who struggle with traditional college track classes thrive with alternative choices. Across the country many public schools are developing alternative education choices that often involve vocational choices. Our goal in seeking this grant is to seed the development of a vocational path for students that will feed off the aviation path but will also teach a broad range of skills related to manufacturing and maintenance of aircraft. Our challenge is that we have the vision but no tools to get started. The ultimate goal is to build an entire light sport aircraft but we will start with acquiring tools and the skills to assemble subassemblies.

STARTER GRANT

Most Holy Redeemer Catholic School – Montgomery
MHRS VEX GO Robotics (Grades 3-8)
Most Holy Redeemer Catholic School desires to provide our third through eighth-grade students with a dynamic and collaborative approach to STEM education through VEX Go Robotics. Our multi-age classrooms (3/4, 5/6, and 7/8) offer an opportunity for all students to apply their background knowledge, particularly in agriculture, to the STEM disciplines and fields of employment. As we transition from a science class to a STEM class, the VEX Go Robotics will enable our students to have access to a range of lessons and labs that align with NGSS, ISTE, and CCSS English Language Arts and Math standards.

Having students apply things such as developing models of atmospheric interaction, using a detailed design process, and gathering information from a variety of sources provides a new approach to STEM, coding, and engineering at Most Holy Redeemer Catholic School. The overall outcome of the VEX Go Robotics is increased STEM content knowledge and elevated student interest and engagement. The VEX Go program offers multiple applications, professional development support, and a hands-on approach, allowing all students to excel, from emerging readers and mathematicians to English language learners and those who excel in the STEM disciplines. In addition, this provides girls and students of color at our school the opportunity to engage with STEM in a concrete way and further acts as a catalyst for them to enter a field in which these two groups are grossly underrepresented. The VEX Go platform also includes built-in formative and summative assessments, allowing students to demonstrate their learning, progress toward standards mastery, and correlate their learning to potential future career pathways. These assessments from the program in addition to NWEAs and feedback from students and families will indicate if the goals of the VEX Go Robotics implementation are being met.

The opportunity that the VEX Go Robotics provides is the closing of the gap of coding and STEM in both concrete and abstract ways in our program’s current configuration. Teacher professional development and picking the progression from VEX Go’s discovery activities to activities to STEM labs will occur during the summer. Students in each class will do one discovery activity from September to November, one standards-aligned activity from December to February, and one STEM lab from March to May. This progression allows for gradually increasing the difficulty of tasks while still giving students an opportunity to experience the VEX Go Robotics while getting room to other parts of the STEM curriculum.

COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIP GRANT (WE SHARE SOLAR)

West Lutheran High School – Plymouth
We Share Solar – Power 2Share Program (Grades 9-12)
Each grant awarded school will receive two Solar Suitcase kits (standalone solar electric systems), including solar lab materials and tools. Program implementation is supported by full access to a virtual learning platform and a curriculum library that allows students and teachers to learn together, accessible anywhere and anytime. This includes 5-10 hours of core lessons plus a supplemental lesson library of 20+ hours of additional lessons that can be adapted by each teacher.

In the classroom, teachers lead students through interactive lessons and hands-on building of a stand-alone solar electric system. Students learn about the impact of innovative solutions to global problems by participating in the international donation of one of the Solar Suitcase they build to an area experiencing energy poverty and lack of access to reliable electricity. Upon completion, one Solar Suitcase will remain at the school for in-place emergency preparedness and to serve as an ongoing solar learning tool.

Once the second Solar Suitcase is installed at its destination in East Africa, students will receive a high-impact placement story and photos, showing their work in action.

The multi-disciplinary approach meets Next Generation Science Standards, teaches young people that they can be agents for positive change and highlights renewable solar energy as a powerful solution to some of the world’s most pressing challenges.