Samuel Saenz

A proposal submitted by East Early College High School recently won the school a grant from ExxonMobil that will help fund science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) programs for girls.

Science teacher Samuel Saenz applied for the company’s Southeastern Consortium Minorities in Engineering (SECME) mini-grant by submitting a proposal entitled “G-3 (Girls, Gears & Gadgets): A Program to Encourage Girls from Economically Disadvantaged Families to Consider STEM Related Career Choice.” The proposal outlines a plan to form a girls’ robotics and engineering team that will not only program robots for competition, but encourage younger students from feeder schools to explore STEM career possibilities.

The grant is sponsored by the ExxonMobil Foundation and supplies teachers with the tools to be “innovative in the classroom and in extracurricular activities to enrich the learning experiences of their students in STEM.”

HISD’s Mickey Leland College Preparatory Academy for Young Men (YMCPA) was also among the SECME mini-grant recipients.  YMCPA’s Vince Hamilton was named 2014 SECME Teacher of the Year, an honor which includes a SECME mini-grant.