Bob Bradley, GTE general manager of customer operations, handed a check for $30,000 to President Martin Jischke Thursday morning to fund Science Bound: The Younger Generation.

The check represented one of 15 two-year, $30,000 GTE grants awarded to colleges and universities in the United States. This year the grant will be used to help fund programs that prepare minority students for college and for careers in science and mathematics.

Among other schools receiving the GTE grant this year are Arizona State, John Hopkins, Georgetown, William and Mary and the University of Iowa.

“Two of the grants are going to schools in Iowa,” Bradley pointed out. “I think that says a lot about Iowa.”

Jischke said this grant is “significant because it is investing in a program that is important to ISU.”

The GTE grant was established in 1982 and since has awarded $5.5 million to help give minority students the skills they need for obtaining a degree and succeeding in the work world.

The grant will help expand the Science Bound program ISU created eight years ago, Jischke said. It will get under-represented minority students in eighth through 12th grades to get “excited about the promise of science and math,” Jischke said.

Science Bound: The Younger Generation will target black and Hispanic students in fourth grade at Des Moines elementary schools.

“We’re still at the very preliminary planning stages,” said Kathy Trahanovsky, Science Bound director.

They have had several planning meetings so far and will have another meeting in a couple weeks, said Minority Student Affairs Director Rafael Rodriguez.

Rodriguez said the program will initially include a minimum of 65 fourth graders and perhaps as many as 80.

“Our goal is to identify schools, teachers, curriculum and students by the end of the school year,” he said. If things go well, he said, they may even have some Science Bound activities before the end of the year.

Trahanovsky said she thinks the new program and the grant are very exciting.

“The Science Bound program has in its short lifetime been very successful,” she said, “but we’ve been aware that by seventh or eighth grade some students have fallen behind in areas like math that are important foundations for going on in science or just aren’t aware how important what they’re doing in early grades is for later on.”

With the new program, they will be able to work with even younger students to foster their appreciation of science and math.

Trahanovsky said they also plan to “help parents become aware of what it takes for students to be successful in school.”

Eleven students from the Science Bound program have now graduated, all moving on to college, Jischke said. Of these, nine are now at ISU.

“Our goal is to have as many as 50 students per year” coming to ISU from the Science bound program, Jischke said.

Students who stick with the Science Bound program and then attend ISU are promised full tuition scholarships, he said.

“Science and technology are important to our future,” Jischke said.