Bristol Township Students Get $30K for STEM Courses

About 1,000 seventh and eighth grade students in the Bristol Township School District will benefit from a $30,000 grant Dow Chemical bestowed Friday morning at Frank D. Roosevelt Middle School.

The grant announcement featured community officials, educators, Dow employees and a giant speaking robot.

Dow officials said the grant will help fund science, technology, engineering and math courses in Bristol Township. Two new courses – Design and Modeling and Automation and Robotics – will be offered to the district’s 1,000 seventh and eight grade students.

The lively robot, H.H. Dowbot, called up seventh-grader Habeeb Baba, who spoke with the robot about STEM education. Teachers and a Dow engineer also encouraged the students to take up STEM studies and learn all they could, adding that the job market was widening with more STEM careers added yearly. School board member Kathreen Bachman spoke and said she was encourages by the amount of young woman she saw in the district’s STEM classes.

The Bristol Township School District applied several months ago for the grant which was awarded by the local Dow Community Advisory Committee.

“The Bristol Township School District’s proposal was outstanding in that it serves a need by adding to a strong high school curriculum and extends the immersion in those subjects,” Joe Saxton said. Saxton is part of the local Dow Community Advisory Committee, which serves the residents of Bristol, Bristol Township and Burlington, N.J.

District Superintendent Dr. Samuel Lee said in a statement that the money that will help expand the middle school programs will only strengthen the pre-engineerig program at the high school.

Adding more engineers to the workforce is important because the United States’ economy has thousands of job positions unfilled because candidates are not qualified enough.

The two new courses, officials hope, will spur more youth to study engineering in a community where just 16 percent of the population has a four-year degrees. Dow did note in a press statement that high school graduates in the district moving forward with engineering studies earned more than $1 million in college scholarships in 2012.

The Dowbot is a tool that help engage people of all ages in their work and STEM education. Dowbot has made appearances throughout the area over the past year.

Two other programs that will benefit students in the Philadelphia region were also awarded $30,000 each by Dow this month.