Science Education Outreach Program (SEOP)
The goal of TLA’s Environmental Science Education Outreach Program is to help cultivate a sense of stewardship of the lakes, streams, and land in young people who will be part of the next generation living within the watersheds of Torch, Bellaire, and Clam Lakes. We work with science teachers and students in the school districts of Central Lake, Bellaire, Kalkaska, and Mancelona.
Science teachers are invited annually to submit a grant application for science materials or experiences that enhance science instruction, but are not within the school district’s budget. This invitation extends to the four school districts within the watersheds of Torch Lake, Clam Lake, and Lake Bellaire. TLA awards as many grants each year as its budget will allow.
Three Lakes Association has provided grants for the following to the four school districts:
- Field trips, including class field trips to Grass River Natural Area and Sleeping Bear Dunes
- Framed maps of the Elk River Chain of Lakes for school libraries
- Science conferences for teachers
- Memberships in state or national science education organizations
- Science magazine subscriptions
- Science equipment, such as microscopes, placed in classrooms
- Participating teachers received most or all of their Wish-List requests
- Serving thousands of science students – classroom and field trip experiences that enhanced their science curriculum
- Total funding from TLA since 2011: more than $76,000.
Inland Seas Schoolship Partnership Program
Through this partnership, TLA funded 30 ISEA Schoolship excursions. While TLA no longer allocates funds specifically for Schoolship excursions, teachers are invited to apply for funding to sail on the Schoolship, or take any field trip, through the SEOP grant process.
Carol Gray Norris Education Fund Was a Success
The Carol Gray Norris Scientific Education Fund was created by the Norris family in honor of Carol Gray Norris to offer loans to students or science competition teams to purchase necessary materials. These funds have been distributed. Here are the highlights:
Funds were used to underwrite a field trip for five Kalkaska physics students with financial needs. These students were able to participate in a multi-day physics experience in Chicago including the Fermi Labs, Museum of Science and Industry, and an amusement park where they measured velocities and gravitational forces. Second graders at Birch Street Elementary School in Kalkaska spent a day at the Au Sable Institute and enabled Bellaire High School’s 12th grade Biology II class to take a field trip to the Fox River, Whitefish Point and other UP destinations.
The CGN Fund provided 6th – 12th grade science classes in Central Lake with current science reading materials and helped Bellaire’s seventh grade fund their annual Hayo Went Ha overnight camp trip.
Elk Rapids Chain of Lakes Maps Distributed
TLA provided a framed map of the Elk River Chain of Lakes Watershed for each library and some classrooms in the four school districts.
Here is information on our SEOP grant awards:
2023-2024 SEOP Awards(November 2023 Newsletter)
2022-2023 SEOP Awards (October 2022 Newsletter)
2018-2019 SEOP Awards (October 2018 Newsletter)
2017-2018 SEOP Awards (October 2017 Newsletter)