October 21, 2015 — The Gulf of Maine Research Institute in Portland is receiving a $6.5 million grant from NASA to create a new educational program focused on science knowledge and problem-solving related to climate change.
The grant will allow the nonprofit organization to upgrade the technical infrastructure at its Sam L. Cohen Center for Interactive Learning in Portland to deliver the new educational content to the 10,000 Maine 5th and 6th graders who visit each year, GMRI announced Tuesday. The organization will also making the educational programing web-accessible to visitors in other science centers and classrooms in Maine and nationwide.
Through customization of the new content from GMRI’s educational program, LabVenture!, the programming will allow students to investigate how climate change is affecting their local region and the rest of the world. The five-year grant, which will begin Nov. 1, will be shared with national science education partners.
Work at GMRI will begin immediately, and new programming content is expected to be available for the 2018-2019 school year.