The Ingenuity Project has been awarded a $100,000 grant from the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation to bring supplemental STEM programming to 500 high-achieving Baltimore middle-school students.

Ingenuity provides about 530 of Baltimore’s advanced 6-12th graders with a science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) curriculum and is hosted by three Baltimore City middle schools – Mount Royal, Hamilton, Roland Park – and one high school, Baltimore Polytechnic Institute (Poly).

The grant will fund a pilot program, a series of advanced STEM team challenges to give students hands-on experience in problem solving and exposure to careers not otherwise offered in traditional classrooms, according to a statement from Ingenuity.

Challenges will take place at the three Ingenuity middle schools as well as the district’s gifted and advanced learning sites.

“Our goal is to reach an additional 150 non-Ingenuity middle school students through these STEM challenges,” Lisette Morris, Ingenuity’s s director, told The Brew.

“Both Ingenuity and Poly high school want to identify and support more high-achieving low-income students from across the district who want to pursue STEM careers in the future.”

Partnerships are being formed with universities and corporations in the design of the STEM challenges.

“We also hope to seek additional funding through individual donors and foundations so that we can have the necessary equipment, transportation and training for teachers,” Morris added.

“We will be meeting with school leaders over the summer to share the opportunity and invite them to identify teachers to participate for their school.”