(Lake Park)– Harris-Lake Park is one of 31 Iowa school districts to receive the 2026-’27 STEM BEST Program award and grant. Middle School-High School Principal Greg Hiemstra tells KUOO news Harris-Lake Park was singled out for their STEM Wolves DEN, or Discovery, Experience and Navigation initiative…
“We have done a lot of STEM initiatives and programs at Harris-Lake Park but we had an opportunity to apply for a grant to just give more opportunities for students in our K-12 and so. The grant we applied for is for $50,000 and we received all of those funds. We have to match $25,000 so beginning here in the next couple of months and for the next year we’ll be committing $75,000 total to a STEM initiative. We’re getting a number of different items from Lego STEM kits for our elementary, 3-D printers, robotics for high school, VR goggles. Just going to make a K-12 push to get STEM activities in the hands of our students and then hopefully get students connected to careers in STEM fields as well and expose them to it as much as possible.”
Hiemstra says a lot of work went into receiving the grant…
“There’s an extensive grant writing process and you really have to prove how you’re going to benefit students. You also have to have great community partners as well in your area, so we connected with Pure Fishing in Spirit Lake, Avera Medical Group and then North Iowa Diecast here in Lake Park. It was an extensive grant writing process to get this award but well worth it. We’re super excited to move forward.”
Hiemstra adds he’s grateful to the faculty at Harris-Lake Park for making it possible to receive the grant award…
“It took a lot of effort from the staff at Harris-Lake Park and a lot of willingness to revamp the curriculum and try new things and get these opportunities for students. It certainly was not just myself getting the grant but a team of teachers to make this happen. Really proud of our staff to get this opportunity for our students.”
In addition to Harris-Lake Park, other districts in the Northwest Iowa STEM region receiving grants through the program include Pocahontas Area, Marcus-Meriden-Cleghorn-Remsen-Union, and Storm Lake.
