Honeywell boosts investment in STEM with Space Camp for urban teachers

Honeywell and PREP-KC are teaming up to give Kansas City teachers an out of this world experience to inspire students to explore education and careers in STEM-fields.Honeywell, which manages the Kansas City National Security Campus for the Department of Energy, is creating a new STEM education program based on experiential learning and PREP-KC's Industry Informed Instruction ^™ for the Honeywell Educators in Space Program.

Honeywell is providing funding to send up to 30 math and science teachers from PREP-KC partner schools to the Honeywell Educators at Space Academy at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama in June 2018. The program, commonly called Space Camp, is aligned with national science and mathematics standards.

"We are proud to provide this exceptional professional development learning opportunity to local teachers who work in some of our communities most economically challenged neighborhoods," said John Ricciardelli, President of Honeywell FM&T. "We look forward to seeing how they bring the lessons of space camp to life in the classroom to inspire the next generation of engineers, scientists and technical professionals."

PREP-KC will create a cohort of these teachers to help them continue to learn from the Space Camp experience, and implement instructional innovations fostered by the experience. The program has the potential to develop a critical mass of teachers in the urban core of bi-state Kansas City with the common goal of bringing teachers' instruction to life through real-world projects and experiences.

All teachers interested in attending the program must apply online by November 14, 2017. For more information about the program please visit https://educators.honeywell.com/application or contact Ashlee Parker-Osborne at aparkerosborne@kcp.com.

A fifth grade teacher shares her firsthand account of the HESA program. Read about her experience here.