TERRA SCIENCE AND EDUCATION INC

Terra provides several unique programs to address the issue of the lack of opportunities for K-12 students and teachers. With these programs, we aim to close the opportunity gap between students and educators who lack resources, means, and opportunities to expose their students for higher-order programs and global collaborations and networks in STEM-related activities to increase their engagement in such fields. We also provide opportunities in STEM and environmental education to promote project based educations for both environmental conciseness and STEM. We also aim to keep our management costs lower than 10-11% (compared to 15-18 national averages) for better utilizing our resources and provide more opportunities for those who are in need of in less or no cost.

Our strategies include;
a) providing regional, national, and international professional development and research opportunities for teachers to develop such skills and knowledge to engage their students in hands-on STEM education.
b) providing regional capacity-building grants for schools to create environments for educators to develop new opportunities for their students
c) providing regional, national, international STEM network opportunities for students to share their research with their peers
d) providing grants and scholarships for schools and students

We have three staff members and two program-specific consultants who are experienced to develop regional or international STEM programs. We work with several local and regional volunteers to get help for a portion of the work we do; especially local university faculty members, or STEM activists who are retired or work in STEM-related fields. In addition, we collaborate with several non-profit school districts, museums, and universities in offering our programs. The engagement of volunteers and local non-profit organizations also lowers the cost of our programs. We have a steady income level to offer existing programs and we have been working on grant writing to receive additional funding for new programs.

We have developed several (6 regional and 3 national/international) programs to accomplish our goals as described before. We kept our management costs below 9-10% and be able to offer more programs with the funding we have. We served ANNUALLY;
a) around 300 middle and high school students in the Central New York area through our regional STEM fairs,
b) around 150 teachers through our Urban Education conference
c) around 20 students through our College readiness and SAT prep program
d) around 3 teachers who developed STEM fairs in their school for the first time through our Teacher fellowship program
e) around 15-18 schools who received $3-5K to develop new STEM programs through our capacity-building programs
f) around 10 teachers 20 students who attend Bahamas research program who will lead their students in coming years,
g) around 90 students who achieved success at their NY state tests through our scholarship programs
h) around 20 students who received up to $4,000 college scholarship by attending a 4-year college and keeping a certain minimum GPA through our scholarship program.
i) around 1500 participants from more than 80 countries and 45 states through GENIUS Olympiad
i) around 30 students and teachers who published their research through our international journal of high school research.

We are working on networking with local school districts and museums to receive federal funding for several new programs to increase STEM engagement and professional development for teachers.

We would like to increase our donation and grant income to increase our program offerings and the number of students and teacher we serve.