Scholarships and Grants

Scholarships and Grants

The Scientists' Society's Scholarship and Grants program supports and encourages students interested in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), and focuses particularly on younger students who are still undecided as to their future.

This past year, the Society significantly increased its support of Scholarship and Grants Committee initiatives, primarily directed toward Lee County elementary, middle and high school students and teachers. These included science camps and outreach activities hosted by FGCU, Ding Darling and the Edison-Ford Estates, and grants to science teachers to purchase science teaching materials for their classrooms. We also provided awards for the regional science fair and travel grants for local winning teams to state and national science competitions. 

The Scientists' Society awarded a total of $40,555 in scholarships and grants.

Strategy for 2023

Our strategy is to continue our focus on middle school students as well as programs that benefit a larger group of students. We are limiting our college bound scholarships to one. We liked the process last year of picking the schools and letting the teachers and guidance counselors choose the student. They are the closest to the students and know them better than we could. We are expanding our outreach to more science-based organizations to take advantage of programs that are up and running and we like. We are doing a second 6-month plan so we can align our yearly planning with our fiscal year and school year.

Funding

The funding for these programs comes from two sources: The Society's budget allocation for scholarships and education funds, and generous donations from our members.

Successful Programs from Jan-May 2023

Teacher Grants for Teaching Supplies

We started the year authorizing $250 teacher grants for science teaching supplies. Twenty-seven were awarded for a maximum authorization of $6,750. Teachers must submit receipts to be reimbursed. Our expenditures totaled $6,555.

College Bound Scholarships

We would like to give one $2000 college bound scholarships this year. We will work with our contact teachers to choose the student.  We will also be giving 2 scholarships to students as FSW as part of our endowment.

FGCU's Whittaker Center Engagement

We gave FGCU $6,000 for summer camps and the GEMS (girls in engineering and math) programs.

Edison/Ford Education Programs

We gave Edison-Ford Estates $6,000 for summer camps and their robotics program. This included travel funds to regional, state and national competitions. Both teams won awards at the state competition and the original team also won an award at the national competition. The society was well represented in all their PR and communications.

Grants for Lee County School Teachers who Run Science Fairs

To show our support for a difficult science fair year, we gave $4,500 to teachers who ran the fairs, $300 to fifteen different teachers. 

Lee County Schools Regional Science Fair Awards

We gave $2,500 for awards and travel for local winning Science Fair and Inventors Fair teams to state and national competitions. 

Technology Student Associations

We gave $500 each to the Technology Student Association programs at Oasis Charter School and Dunbar High School. (TSA is a national, nonprofit organization of high school and middle school student members who are engaged in STEM. (See https://tsaweb.org) They won regional, state and world championships!

Ding Darling WOW (Wing on Wheels) program

We supported Ding Darling’s WOW (wildlife on wheels) activity with a $10,000 grant. They go to under-privileged schools with a van loaded with interactive displays. Trudy volunteered for this program and personally saw the excitement in young students’ eyes when they were learning about the science of our area. 

Cape Coral Technical College

For the first time, we gave a $2,000 scholarship to a Cape Coral Technical College student who is studying Computer Science. 

College Scholarship

And as always, we gave a $2,000 Scholarship to a College Bound student. This time the student was from Mariner High School.

- Scholarship Committee

Trudy Sampson, Chair

Contributions

We hope to inspire excitement in STEM throughout the students' education. Please join our donors in contributing to our STEM education fund. We have two restricted contributions funds: STEM Education, which funds our programs to encourage elementary, middle and high school students in Lee County develop an increase their interest in science and support science teachers through grants, and Student-Teacher Dinners, which pay for the dinners of the outstanding students and their teachers who we invite to attend our April student recognition and awards program. All contributions to these funds are restricted only to those programs. Our third fund is non-restricted and used for other elements of our mission as approved by our Board of Directors.

We encourage your contributions so we may continue to expand our positive impact on STEM interest and education.