From the 270 submissions for the Dow STEMtheGAP Summer Teacher Challenge, 25 teachers were selected to each receive a grant from Dow to advance their STEM education platforms in the classroom. Introduced in the spring of 2014, Dow’s STEMtheGAP initiative encourages educators within the U.S. to voice their concerns on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education, and propose solutions to help improve the country’s STEM education crisis. The Summer Challenge winners were chosen by a panel of judges from The Center for Science Teacher Learning for their outstanding ideas as well as for offering important feedback related to the current and future states of STEM education.

“The responses we receive from teachers continue to demonstrate the need to stem the major gaps that exist in STEM Education,” said Rob Vallentine, Dow Director, Corporate Citizenship and President of The Dow Chemical Company Foundation. “Dow appreciates the power of teachers to inspire students and prepare them to become the STEM workforce of tomorrow. We are extremely proud to see that these grants are helping to motivate and encourage teachers while also making an impact in the classrooms, schools and our communities.”

Over 20 percent of The Summer Challenge applicants identified lack of funding and resources as a major gap in STEM education, with another 20 percent identifying difficulties implementing more “hand on” education as major challenges. While these gaps exist, our winning teachers also provided several solutions to help advance STEM education. These solutions include establishing a STEM curriculum that connects upper and lower grades, forming partnerships with local businesses to develop students’ real-world application skills, creating interdisciplinary and project-based lessons that encourage more hands-on learning and engaging in exploratory methods of education.

Established as a three-phase program, the Dow STEMtheGAP™ Teacher Challenge has awarded 25 grants each in the spring and summer, and will award another 50 grants in the fall, for a total of 100 grants distributed to teachers for 2014. The submission period for Fall Challenge entries ended October 31; winners will be announced in January 2015.