In 2008, KeyBank Foundation made a three-year, $600,000 grant to CMSD to help the District implement MC2-STEM High School, which opened at General Electric in Nela Park that fall.

KeyBank Foundation and the Cleveland Metropolitan School District today announced that the Foundation has awarded the District a grant of $700,000 to support the expansion of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) curriculum into six preK-8 District schools.

Key CEO Beth Mooney noted that “KeyBank’s stated purpose is to help our clients and communities thrive.  This grant is both a vote of confidence in the Cleveland schools and their leadership, and an investment in a curriculum that has supported important and proven academic gains – a curriculum that will help Cleveland’s children thrive.”

KeyBank Foundation chair Margot Copeland added, “The Foundation is very pleased to be able to help bring the power of STEM education to these six schools.”

In 2008, KeyBank Foundation made a three-year, $600,000 grant to CMSD to help the District implement MC2-STEM High School, which opened at General Electric in Nela Park that fall.

The first $600,000 of the 2011 grant will help expand the STEM curriculum into six preK-8 schools: Hannah Gibbons; George Washington Carver; Mary B. Martin; Mound; Orchard; and Michael R. White.  The final $100,000 will provide additional experiences to insure that STEM students are ready for college.

A signature piece of this program will be use of the FabLab (Fabrication Lab), which was created at MIT.  The lab links computers to production equipment to make objects that students themselves design.  Each MC2STEM site has a FabLab, and a new mobile lab sponsored in part by KeyBank Foundation will make FabLab available to other schools in the District.

Cleveland will be the first district to use this equipment with preK-8 schools.  The mobile FabLab will travel to each of the six STEM elementary schools, so that students in the six schools will complete two FabLab units per year.