Three Ankeny Schools Receive Cargill Grants to Boost Math, Science, Engineering Courses

From an Ankeny Schools news release:

Ankeny High School, Parkview Middle School and Prairie Ridge Middle School all recently received Project Lead The Way grants from Cargill, according to a district news release.  

received $35,000 for implementation of a PLTW program to be used over the period of three school years, from 2012-2015.

At and — each school will receive $21,750 for the 2012-2013 school year — the money will be used to implement three PLTW courses during the year, and those courses will replace three middle school technology-related exploratories, said Dr. Jen Lindaman, executive director of secondary education for the Ankeny Community School District, in the release. The new courses are seventh-grade Automation and Robotics; eighth-grade Design and Modeling; and eighth-grade Energy and the Environment. 

The interest in the high school PLTW program and the desire to improve students’ skills in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) areas brought on the review and replacement of the three exploratories with the PLTW middle school curriculum, the release said.

“We know that the PLTW curriculum will complement our core science and math curriculum at grades seven and eight, and we expect this curriculum will continue our efforts to improve science and math achievement,” Lindaman said. “We will have five teachers attending two weeks of summer training at both Iowa State University and the University of Iowa in preparation for teaching the courses this fall.” 

Mike Boyle, associate principal of Northview Middle School, will coordinate the implementation of the middle school PLTW courses.

PLTW is the leading provider of rigorous and innovative STEM education curricular programs used in middle and high schools across the United States, according to the district news release.

In the fall of 2010, schools in the Ankeny school district began offering Introduction to Engineering Design, the first in a series of engineering courses from the PLTW curriculum. The second course, Principles of Engineering, was offered to Ankeny High School students in the fall of 2011. Enrollment in these courses has skyrocketed, and some students are already registered to take the third course in the series, Digital Electronics. The Digital Electronics class will be offered as a block course at the Des Moines Area Community College campus during each semester of the 2012-2013 school year. A fourth course in the series is planned to be offered at DMACC in the fall of 2013.

In congratulatory letters sent to the district, PLTW President and Chief Financial Officer Vince M. Bertram said, “We are confident that your students and teachers will find the PLTW Curriculum and Professional Development Program extremely relevant to their needs. As a former superintendent and high school principal, I have witnessed the engaging power of PLTW to spark student imagination, innovation, and an intense desire to learn.”