STEM

Boston Museum To Spend $200,000 To Help Teachers With Engineering Curriculum

• By Michael Hart
• 11/17/15

The Museum of Science, Boston will spend $200,000 to help elementary school teachers integrate engineering into their classroom instruction.

Scholarships will be awarded on a competitive basis to first- through fifth-grade teachers so that they can better teach engineering to young students.

The scholarship program will provide the teachers with their own classroom sets of Engineering Is Elementary (EiE) curriculum, which was developed at the museum's National Center for Technological Literacy. It will also pay for the teachers to attend a two-day hands-on EiE teacher professional development workshop at the museum in Boston.

"This scholarship program is a direct expression of commitment to our core mission, which is to see that all students have access to high-quality engineering education, starting at an early age," said EiE Director and Museum Vice President Christine Cunningham. "One way we do this is by giving teachers the tools and training they need to be successful teaching engineering."

The museum created the EiE curriculum because curators there said they believed that engineering was one subject in most STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) programs that has received little attention.

The museum is now accepting applications and scholarship recipients will be announced in January. Special attention will be given to applicants who teach in rural areas and who work with English language learners.

"It can be especially challenging for teachers in rural districts to access high-quality professional development," Cunningham said.

The Museum of Science, Boston is one of the largest science centers in the world. It receives about 1.4 million visitors each year and its STEM programs have affected 9.5 million students and 104,000 teachers.