Seven local teachers receive grants for STEM projects
FirstEnergy Corp. has awarded Science, Technology, Engineering and Math grants totaling more than $14,000 to 19 Pennsylvania teachers in the company’s West Penn Power Co.’s utility service area.
The grants will be used for a variety of hands-on projects, workshops and teacher development programs in classrooms across the service area.
Local grant winners, their schools and projects are:
• Eric Armstrong, West Greene School District – Students will calculate battery discharge rates, capacitance and voltage changes for a variety of batteries, as well as charge and discharge rates and operating temperatures.
• Shannon Gottshalk, Central Christian Academy, Houston – Students will design, build and program robots to interact with the environment around them using LEDs, motors and sensors.
• Steve Kropinak, Canon-McMillan High School – Student groups will construct various types of circuits, formulate theories about why the circuits perform as they do and then test their theories.
• Howard Johnson, Charleroi Area Middle School – Students will build, test, calibrate and deploy their own sensors in the field to gather data bout area streams.
• Mike McCarthy, Trinity East Elementary School – Students will study circuits, conductors and insulators and learn how to wire a circuit to a light bulb.
• Lisa Swartz, Brownsville Area Elementary School – Students will design and build self-driving toy cars.
• Anna Wellek, McMurray Elementary School School – Students will study wind turbines, and then design and make rotor blades of their own design to increase both rotor speed and potential electrical output.
“FirstEnergy has long supported educational activities in communities served by our Pennsylvania utilities, particularly those that encourage students to pursue careers in the critical fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics,” said Dee Lowery, president of the FirstEnergy Foundation. “We are pleased to provide assistance to so many STEM projects this year to support our students, schools and educators as they work to help build a strong work force for the future.”
Grant recipients are recommended by local educators who comprise FirstEnergy’s Educational Advisory Council. As part of the program, recipients must furnish a written summary and evaluation of their projects that can be shared with other educators in FirstEnergy’s service area.