The Ed+gineering project team is thrilled to announce a mini-grant competition for $500 worth of engineering supplies! We understand that one of the biggest challenges for integrating engineering is a lack of supplies or funding for supplies. We hope this opportunity will remove this barrier!

Who is Eligible to Apply for the Mini-Grant Competition?

If you have participated in at least two courses—taught by either Dr. Kidd or Dr. Gutierrez—where you learned and taught engineering lessons with engineering major partners to elementary school students during your time at Old Dominion University, you are eligible to apply for mini-grants!

Application

Each semester, you can apply for a mini-grant of up to $500 worth of engineering supplies that will be used in your classroom and that you will get to keep. You will need to complete an application by October 14th for Fall semester funds, or by February 10th for Spring semester funds. In the application, you will need to include:

• A description of your planned engineering lesson including how the requested supplies will be used and how it connects to your curriculum
• The engineering design challenge students will complete including criteria and constraints
• Lesson start date and time frame
• A plan to involve a second educator in some way
• A plan to create a summary (with pictures) of the taught lesson to share with us and your school’s media outlets
• A spreadsheet/doc with requested supplies, prices, and links to purchase
• A compelling argument for why your application should be funded

Immediately following the mini-grant submission deadlines, the Ed+gineering project team will evaluate your application and as many as 5 mini-grants will be awarded for each semester.

After Being Awarded

Mini-grant winners will be expected to share evidence (i.e., pictures, videos, written summary, student reflections) of the engineering design challenge(s) their students completed with both the Ed+gineering project team and your school/school division’s social media outlets (e.g., Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, PeachJar). Awardees would also be asked to share their digital lesson plan and/or engineering design challenge to be published online.

Need an Idea for an Engineering Lesson?

If you do not immediately have ideas about the materials you want to use for your engineering design challenge, that is okay! We’ve created a list of resources and ideas that you may want to include in your mini-grant application. You may even swing by ODU and get up to three “Try It!” engineering kits from Engineering is Elementary (EiE). These kits include supplies for you to try out the engineering challenge to figure out which one you’d like to write into your mini-grant application. These are available now! Please contact edgineering@odu.edu to indicate which individual kits (see list of resources and ideas) you would like and to schedule a time to pick them up.

Questions?

Please contact edgineering@odu.edu.

This mini-grant opportunity runs by funding courtesy of the National Science Foundation (NSF).