SEED Announces 2014 Grant Winners
The Seacoast Educational Endowment for Dover (SEED), a non-profit organization founded to foster teacher creativity and fund new learning initiatives within Dover district schools, is pleased to announce it has awarded six education grants. The winners, located at Dover High School, Dover Middles School, and Cocheco Arts and Technology Academy (CATA), were selected from the fall open application period that closed on December 1, 2014.
Kim Stephens, Dover High School (DHS) Dean of Students, has received a grant to support the implementation of a Summer Leadership Camp for the Student Ambassadors of Dover High School. The Student Ambassadors take on leadership roles in a variety of clubs, teams, and focus groups, as well as facilitate freshman orientation, disseminating programming information during dozens of student and parent tours and during middle school presentation. This project will fund summer training for all ambassadors allowing them to help ease the transition for hundreds of incoming students.
Mary Jean Hippern, DHS Physical Education Teacher, will provide approximately 20 wheelchairs to Dover High School, under the auspices of the Northeast Passage Disabilities Awareness Program Grant. The wheelchairs will be used four days each semester for educational purposes in physical education classes, specifically in activities that bring awareness to disabilities as they pertain to sports.
Thanks to a SEED grant, DHS Biology Teacher Caitlin Tenney will be purchasing twelve K’NEX 3-D DNA and Transcription Models for use in all DHS Biology classes. The kit allows biology students to create 3-D models of a DNA structure. It will engage students in hands on learning, while constructing and deconstructing a DNA structure.
Patricia Mulqueen, Dover Middle School (DMS) Math Teacher will now be able to offer online, virtual, after school homework help thanks to the Homework Help Hotline SEED Grant. She will provide extra math help using the software platform Electa Virtual Classroom, where she will also be able to access a whiteboard to virtually recreate math problems and show the steps to a correct solution. Students will be able to join in with their own electronic devices, allowing a need for after school math help that has previously been impossible due to after school conflicts and lack of transportation.
Another DMS Teacher, Lisa Dillingham, has been afforded the opportunity to purchase a Weather Station for her classroom. The station will allow her science students to gather accurate weather data and consequently, analyze, make predictions, and share information based on this data. Beyond the classroom, DMS hopes to become a reporting site for local weather on WMUR.
The last SEED Grant awarded for this application period is to Eric Turner, CATA Music Director, for sound technology. The grant will help run a DBx Graphic Equalizer and a Kustom Monitor, which will allow students to increase their involvement in the application of sound-technology. While learning about concepts such as wiring connections, matching ohms, signal flow, and sound quality improvement, students will be helping to fulfill the school’s mission of integrating technology with the Arts.
SEED raises private philanthropic dollars and provides grant funds, on a competitive basis, to educators who submit formal applications. In the midst of its public campaign, SEED is seeking 100 donors at the $100 level to support its next funding period that will occur in the spring. To learn more about SEED’s 100 for $100, please visit http://www.DoverSeed.org