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Educators |
Arkansas Regional Robotics HubsArkansas universities, two-year colleges, and educational consortiums with an interest in developing a BEST Robotics Hub in their respective area are urged to apply. The purpose of the BEST Robotics Grant Project is to promote and fund the development of BEST Robotics Hubs in regions of Arkansas that will serve school districts currently with limited or no access to these projects. Each hub will serve up to twenty-four school districts (teams) and the applicant's affiliation will serve as the lead organization for these grants. This is a competitive grant with proposal submission deadlines the first Monday of October and the first Monday of February. Program guidelines, application instructions, and reporting requirements may be found at the bottom of this page. For questions regarding the application process contact: Becky Hart http://www.bestinc.org/MVC/About/what_is_best will provide more information on BEST Robotics Inc. Proposals must be submitted on behalf of a PARTNERSHIP by a LEAD ORGANIZATION that is an institution of higher education in conjunction with multiple public, parochial or private K-12 schools within a designated region of Arkansas . The lead organization will be the prime awardee, assuming fiscal responsibility and the programmatic monitoring role for the overall award. Each PARTNERSHIP must include one or more institutions of higher education and eight or more school district partners. Once established, the lead organization is encouraged to recruit additional school teams and expand to include other partners to the collaboration as the hub matures and expands. Partnerships that meaningfully engage additional stakeholders in the BEST Hub enterprise are strongly encouraged. Effective partnerships likely will include community organizations, business and industry, professional societies, research laboratories, local volunteers, district-level educational support centers, private foundations, and other public and private organizations with interests in regional education such as local business roundtables or chambers of commerce. Anticipated Type of AwardTargeted Awards will be Standard Grants of up to $15,000 with a 50% community match requirement. Estimated Number of AwardsTwo Targeted Awards per year. Program Goals
The Arkansas Regional Robotics Hub Program emphasizes that mathematicians, scientists and engineers at institutions of higher education and within communities accept vital roles in this effort to impact Arkansas ' youth who are the future workforce. These Hub leaders will work with local teachers, local mentors and school administrators to substantially improve student achievement. Therefore, local teachers leading specific teams, local mentors, as well as school administrators, and the key higher education faculty should be defined and the roles they will play to the development of the hubs when responding to the Arkansas Robotics Hub solicitation. The Authority will look for regional distribution of “unserved” school districts and program descriptions that effectively engage higher education institutions in addressing the goals noted above. It is expected that higher education faculty and students might work together and with school districts to embed educational technologies into local school core curriculum courses and to ensure that teachers effectively model and use the technologies and strategies needed in the yearly robotics challenge as both instructional tools and as tools of the mathematics and science disciplines. Targeted awards should address particular regional areas where improvements in science and mathematics instruction and achievement can be assessed and where resources are needed to develop meaningful partnerships. Targeted awards are one time grants for amounts up to $15,000 specific for the purchase of capital equipment needed to initiate a new hub. A letter of support indicating co-funding partnerships by local industry and community is a requisite for grant application. Once established, BEST hubs are virtually self-sufficient, so sustainability is a critical factor in evaluating a potential new hub for the Arkansas Regional Robotics Hub program. Sustainability means the ability to support, both financially and physically (i.e., manpower), the partnership and replacement costs of capital equipment and consumables utilized by the Hub. Description of plans should include management detail and future plans for maintaining an on-going annual program. The following forms are pdf documents and require Guidelines -PDF
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