Grants

2023-2024 USDA Forest Service Greening STEM Grants

The USDA Forest Service (FS) continues to collaborate with NEEF to build the capacity of FS units (including institutions in the State & Private Forestry network, such as state forests) to use components of NEEF’s Greening STEM model (www.neefusa.org/greening-stem) to design and deliver STEM programming. in 2023, $35,000 was awarded to issue grants ranging from $5,000 to $10,000 each for projects during the 2023-2024 academic school year.

Through these FS Greening STEM grants, FS and NEEF seek to advance mutual STEM education goals by providing program participants with access to authentic STEM experiences that use the environment and the agency’s unique mission—to sustain the health, diversity, and productivity of the Nation's forests and grasslands to meet the needs of present and future generations—as a context for engagement.

Programming funded by these grants will utilize STEM-focused content, instructional strategies, training approaches, and collaboration and dissemination technologies to assist school educators and staff in implementing and enhancing learning in and outside of the classroom, with a primary focus on FS-related subject matter. Following project completion, all resources and related content developed under these grants will be made available via NEEF’s Greening STEM Hub. For examples of successful past projects check out NEEF’s collection of project videos and educational resources.

List of Grantee Awarded

Nonprofit Partner: Gateway to the Great Outdoors
Location: Chicago, IL and St. Louis, MO

Gateway to the Great Outdoors (GGO) is partnering with FS Urban Connections Program to engage middle school students at two schools in Chicago and two schools in St. Louis with their Future Foresters program. Students will engage in place-based environmental monitoring programs at both locations. In Chicago, students will visit the Midewin Tallgrass Prairie for their field experiences, and in St. Louis, students will visit the Mark Twain National Forest. FS representatives and GGO staff will guide students to understand the importance of ecosystems and what they can do to protect those that surround them.

Nonprofit Partner: South Yuba River Citizens League
Location: Nevada City, CA

South Yuba River Citizens League (SYRCL) will continue to work with FS in an expansion of its previously funded Greening STEM project. The goal of the project is to equip students from Bitney Prep High School’s Environmental Science class and Nevada Union High School’s Climate Change Club with the tools they need to become citizen scientists. Students will learn water quality monitoring practices and apply those techniques at a nearby and popular river crossing on Tahoe National Forest land. SYRCL and FS staff will help students interpret the data they collect to better understand various impacts on water quality, such as increased visitation, rain events, and drought, and create meaningful and effective public service announcements to educate the public how to be stewards of the watershed.

Nonprofit Partner: Great Basin Institute
Location: Reno, NV

The Forest Service Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit’s (LTBMU) goal is to use locally relevant STEM programming to provide students with essential early exposure to outdoor, hands-on science experiences while additionally assisting to build citizen science capacity. The LTBMU intends to implement an invasive species monitoring program that focuses on Eurasian watermilfoil restoration activities in the Taylor Creek Visitor Center Area, a local creek that drains into Lake Tahoe, for South Tahoe High School students. The data that students will help collect will provide insight into current Eurasian watermilfoil remediation practices and their efficacy, and can be used to optimize future remediation plans.

Nonprofit Partner: Mainspring Conservation Trust, Inc.
Location: Franklin, NC

Mainspring Conservation Trust plans to provide fun, high-quality STEM programs in the Nantahala National Forest for Grade 6 students in Macon County School District. Two field trips will integrate concepts of stewardship and indigenous culture into programs while also providing hands-on STEM learning activities at different locations throughout the national forest and partner lands. FS staff will employ different educational techniques—including focused exploration, discussion based on evidence, and data analysis—while allowing the activities to be driven by students’ natural wonder and curiosity. Throughout the program, as students collect tree data at FS Southern Research Station’s Coweeta Hydrological Laboratory and experience STEM Migration Day at Tessentee Bottomlands Preserve, they will increase STEM literacy and their connection to public lands.