2018 Grants

THE YOUNG WOMEN'S LEADERSHIP SCHOOLS (NEW YORK CITY)

STEMposium

We have supported The Young Women’s Leadership Schools with a variety of grants for the past nine years and we're happy to continue our support again this year. Hundreds of young women get a quality single-sex education at these schools across New York City. (You can read more about them at https://www.studentleadershipnetwork.org/program/the-young-womens-leadership-schools/)

In May 2019, between 100 and 125 students across grades 6-12 will attend TYWLS’s fourth annual STEMposium, a day of workshops, speakers, and networking opportunities hosted in partnership with Cornell University. STEMposium has three main components:

Non-Competitive Science Fair

Students will present their independent scientific research to an audience of both their peers and STEM professionals from Weill Cornell Medicine, Cornell Tech, Cornell Center for Materials Research, Cornell Cooperative Extension – NYC, and other program partners.

Interactive Workshops

Students will participate in two interactive STEM workshops presented by Cornell staff. These workshops will focus on inspiring the students to pursue STEM-related education and careers. Last year’s presenters were:

  • Weill Cornell Medicine: Understanding Genetic Inheritance in How We Taste and Smell

  • Cornell Centers for Materials Research: Polymers and Their Role Our Everyday Lives

  • Cornell Tech: Keeping it Private Online: What Websites Know About You, and How

  • Cornell Cooperative Extension – NYC: If You Build It, They Will Come

Robotics Expo

Each of the five TYWLS school’s robotics team will show off their robots in a TYWLS-wide competition organized by older high school students and TYWLS alumnae.

The Foundation’s grant will pay for five teachers, for their out-of-school planning time with students, as well as for two TYWLS alumnae who are organizing the robotics expo. The grant will also pay for buses and student metrocards for travel to and from the STEMposium, robotics equipment and supplies, science fair presentation materials, and food for students during after-school preparation time. The grant is for $7350 (approximately half of the total cost of the symposium) and will benefit between 100 and 125 young women.

THE GIRLS’ MIDDLE SCHOOL (PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA)

The Jennifer Kay Foundation has supported programs at The Girls’ Middle School since 2010. (You can learn more about GMS here: http://www.girlsms.org/.) This year, we’re happy to support an exciting new initiative at GMS, as well as two programs we’ve supported in the past.

Robotics kits

In the fall of 2018, GMS relaunched a robotics extracurricular club called Byte Sized. The club participated in the Vex Robotics Turning Point Competition in December 2018, competing against more than 40 clubs from schools across Silicon Valley. In order to launch this program, GMS invested in the Vex Robotics V5 Classroom Starter Kit with Cortex Voucher. This versatile kit allows GMS students to learn and practice the concepts of robotics build and programming. The kit can be re-purposed by the instructor to teach a variety of lessons in mechanical advantage, programming, and iterative design.

This spring, GMS will expand the reach of the GMS robotics program so every sixth grader will participate in an eight-session engineering and robotics mini-course taught by a faculty member who has experience in the aerospace industry and who holds a Master’s degree in Structural Engineering from Stanford University. GMS also plans to launch a robotics “intersession” course so interested students can dive deeper into the study of robotics (GMS has one-week special courses each semester, for small groups of students to engage more fully with an area of interest). The Foundation’s grant will enable this expansion by paying for three new Vex V5 robotics classroom sets.

The grant is for $1850, which will cover three robotics kits and related costs.

Build-A-Circuit Kits

As we did in 2016 and 2015, this year we will support GMS’s use of Chibitronic circuit kits (http://chibitronics.com). The kits, which were designed by a woman affiliated with the MIT Media Lab, help instructors explain how electrical gates -- the basis of all computer chips -- work. The girls build several simple circuits for themselves, connecting batteries and LEDs in various ways with conductive copper tape (no soldering required). As GMS noted, “for many girls, this is their very first experience making an electronic circuit and these materials make abstract concepts accessible, understandable, and lead to successful completion.” 

The kits are “consumable” and the students take home their completed projects at the end of the unit. This year, we will fund 68 kits, for the entire 8th Grade class, for a total of $1,750.

Exploratorium Field Trip

We will again support a field trip for the entire GMS 8th Grade to the Exploratorium in San Francisco, a science museum that focuses on hands-on, interactive exhibits. (http://www.exploratorium.edu/) GMS science teachers integrate the lessons learned at the Exploratorium into later classroom instruction, and when students are required to do a science project for the annual GMS science exhibition, the students are given the option of explaining one of the exhibits they saw at the Exploratorium. The trip has proven to be a successful way of making science more accessible and interesting to the students. 

The grant is for $1640, which will cover all 66 students in Grade 8.