Kids’ imaginations make them natural inventors. Students at Avonworth Middle School will be tapping into that innate inclination through a new partnership with engineers and product developers from Inventionland, an idea incubator in Pittsburgh. With help from these mentors students will hone in on a problem, design an idea to solve it, prototype a solution, and “pitch” the idea to Inventionland executives. The project is made possible by a STEAM grant from the Benedum Foundation, the Grable Foundation, and the Chevron Corporation. Avonworth’s project is one of 28 grants to southwestern Pennsylvania school districts totaling $530,000. Since 2009, more than $2.3 million in STEAM grants have been awarded to schools, all distributed through the Allegheny Intermediate Unit’s Center for Creativity.

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