HICKORY CORNERS — A longstanding effort to enrich K-12 science instruction in area schools has won another five years of major funding.

A $2.65 million National Science Foundation grant will team Michigan State University graduate students with K-12 science teachers from 11 area school districts in a project designed to provide classroom support for local teachers while making college students better science communicators.

The grant will fund eight graduate fellowships per year for five years in the new GK-12 Bioenergy Sustainability Project, organized by MSU researchers at the Kellogg Biological Station, near Hickory Corners in Richland Township. A ninth yearly fellowship will be funded by the MSU Graduate School.

The fellows will come from the fields of science, technology, engineering and math and will collaborate with K-12 teachers to design and help supervise student activities exploring ecologically sustainable energy production, said GK-12 director and MSU zoology professor Tom Getty.

View full sizeMark Bugnaski | Kalamazoo GazetteScience teachers Robb Cahoon, of Comstock Alternative High School, and Sandy Erwin, of Battle Creek’s Harper Creek High School, measure the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide from soil microbes.“The goal is to help future scientists become better at communicating their science, to be able to say ‘Here is what my research is about’ in a way that doesn’t sound absurd,” Getty said. 

The fellows will serve districts already involved in the K-12 Partnership for Science Literacy. This decade-old program links KBS scientists, MSU College of Education faculty members and K-12 science teachers and administrators for the purposes of exposing K-12 teachers to environmental research and training them in inquiry-based teaching methods. 

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