This Friday is the deadline for nominations to the Iowa STEM teachers awards program.
Angel Mendez, a spokeswoman for the Governor’s STEM Advisory Council, says the effort will honor and reward Iowa’s top teachers in that important and broad category.
“You can nominate as many teachers as you want, any STEM teacher that falls into the
science, technology, engineering and mathematics,” Mendez says. “It could be a biology professor, it could be a teacher who’s doing some engineering, they have to be K-through-12 though and it has to be at a public school, as well.”
The state is divided into six different regions and there will be a winner chosen from each of the six. Each winner will get a total of $3,000, that’s $1,500 for their classroom and $1,500 for personal use. “This is now our second year of doing this award and last year we noticed that although the teachers were getting $1,500 to spend on themselves, they actually turned around and spent it on the classroom,” Mendez says. “It just shows how humble and how awesome these teachers are in our state.”
The winners will be notified in February or March with a formal reception at Terrace Hill in April. The award is sponsored by Kemin Industries. To nominate someone, visit the website: stemaward.fluidreview.com
(Reporting by Pat Powers, KQWC, Webster City)