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Center gets grants to provide school resources

HANCOCK – The Western Upper Peninsula Center for Science, Mathematics and Environmental Education is a valuable resource to schools throughout the five western counties of the U.P. Those counties are Baraga, Houghton, Keweenaw, Ontonagon, and Gogebic.

The center offers programs to grades K-12, such as Family Forest and Science Nights, outdoor science field trips, Western Upper Peninsula Science Fair, STEM festival and others.

The center also provides several professional development programs to K-12 teachers to provide them with resources and learning tools to better present math and science to students in the classrooms. These are programs and resources schools otherwise could not offer, due to factors like lack of personnel, resources or funding.

To accomplish all that the center has an efficient staff and requires partnerships with several organizations.

Shawn Opplinger is director of the Western Upper Peninsula Center for Science, Mathematics and Environmental Education, which is located in the Copper Country Intermediate School District building on Hecla Street in Hancock.

All of the programs and resources offered to the schools are grant-funded, Opplinger said, requiring long days and many hours of requesting grants.

“These are 12-hour days, because we’re writing grants, and you’re lucky if you get 25 percent of them,” Chadde said.

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