The Science and Technology Education and TRAINing (STEDTRAIN) Committee is accepting proposals for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Seed Grant programs to be executed in K-12 schools in Jackson, Madison, Marshall, Morgan, and Limestone Counties in Alabama and Lincoln County in Tennessee during the 2024-25 school year.

Since the STEDTRAIN program's founding in 1988, we have awarded 620 STEM Seed Grants totaling more than $673,336. We award Seed Grants for innovative, hands-on projects that stimulate the student’s interest in science and technology. The standard Type I Seed Grant ranges from $200 to $1000. The enhanced Type II Seed Grant requires additional information from the teacher and ranges from $1500 to $2500. The two grant types cannot be combined to make a $3500 Seed Grant. Proposals must involve hands-on activities by the students, and can be either in-class or extracurricular in nature.

Seed Grant Proposals must be submitted through the STEDTRAIN website. The deadline for submission is midnight, April 1, 2023. The school principal must approve the Seed Grant proposal by midnight, April 3, 2023. We will not accept late submissions and approvals. We expect to announce Seed Grant awards on or about August 5, 2023. Please check our website for other important dates and information about submitting a proposal.

To make submitting a proposal easier for returning teachers, our online system now allows you to use a previously submitted Seed Grant proposal as the basis for a new proposal. This includes proposals that were not selected for funding in previous years.

We respectfully and earnestly request that you announce this opportunity to everyone and encourage teachers, students, and parents to prepare proposals jointly for the award of a grant. We look forward to numerous innovative proposals, and we thank you for your attention, cooperation, and commitment to supporting the engineers and scientists of tomorrow.

For more information and to submit a proposal, please visit our website at:

https://stedtrain.org/rfp

Col Michael (Mike) F. Baran (retired), Ph.D., Chair
Mr. Paul Agarwal, Vice Chair
HATS STEDTRAIN