STEM growth stems from grants and awards

WINFIELD — Winfield-Mt. Union Community School District looks forward to expanding their industrial technology program and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) opportunities thanks to four different grants and awards.

According to WMU High School Principal Dave Edwards, Industrial Technology Instructor Trevor Kongable got the ball rolling for some of these grants.

One grant came from the Southeast Iowa Builders Association and will go toward the purchase of a new TIG (Tungsten Inert Gas) Welding and air compressor for the industrial tech shop.

This TIG Welder will give the industrial technology students more access to learning the welding trade.

Recently, the WMU industrial technology students have shown success in the welding trades as they successfully competed in multiple welding competitions over the last school year.

Just last month, senior Caiden Ball even took home second place in the Southeastern Community College’s Southeast Iowa Skills Throw Down welding competition.

Additionally, the industrial technology department will expand their curriculum to include drones thanks to a STEM Scale-Up grant.

According to the Governor’s Stem Advisory Council for Future Ready Iowa, WMU received an award to add “Discover Drones,” to their curriculum.

Iowa STEM describes Discover Drones as a course which will “Prepare students for emerging drone careers with lessons in engineering, iterative design and applied science that encourage collaborative learning.”

According to the WMU Spring Newsletter, over the summer, Kongable will learn about the building and programming of drones.

Next fall, he will then bring this newly acquired knowledge to WMU students as a Drone class in the Industrial Technology program.

WMU received another STEM Scale-Up Award thanks to the application from Elementary Art Teacher Amber Scott.

Scott applied for the STEM Scale-Up’s Storytime STEM-packs award.

According to Iowa STEM this will, “Incorporate age-appropriate STEM+C [Science, Technology, Engineering, Math, and Computer Science] concepts into children’s programming. Children collaboratively explain phenomena or solve the problem, thereby making sense of the STEM concept.”

WMU’s TAG [Talented and Gifted] program will utilize this STEM award as it engages “young learned in STEM and computer science challenges connected to popular children’s books.”

These STEM Scale-Up Programs are made available to Iowa schools through legislative appropriation from the Governor’s STEM Advisory Council.

These two programs, which WMU will utilize, only represent two of the total 13 programs available through this award program designed to “provide high-quality STEM education offerings to schools, after school programs and other settings for grades pre-K through 12,” Iowa STEM explains.

According to the Iowa STEM website, these programs range from building robots and coding programs to conducting agricultural field experiences and learning about STEM careers.

WMU will add even more STEM opportunities as they utilize a Casey’s Cash for Classrooms Grant of $3,500 to create STEM bins for all classrooms preschool through fifth grade.

Comments: AnnaMarie.Ward@southeastiowaunion.com