Toyota USA Foundation Announces $650,000 in New Math and Science Awards

NEW YORK, Jan. 24, 2005 -- Toyota USA Foundation Board of Directors today announced grants totaling $650,836 to fund four math and science education initiatives for K-12 grade students across the country.

Award recipients include the University of Michigan College of Engineering, Ann Arbor, MI; the University of Southern California School of Pharmacy, Los Angeles, CA; Keep America Beautiful, Inc., Stamford, CT; and Earth's Birthday Project, Santa Fe, NM.

"We're delighted to help these four outstanding organizations initiate math and science programs," said Atsushi "Art" Niimi, president of the Toyota USA Foundation, in announcing the grants. "Each of these recipients has developed a unique initiative designed to help K-12 students become more proficient in the areas of mathematics and science. The awards will help them implement these initiatives and provide additional training for teachers, in order to maintain and expand them throughout the years."

The University of Michigan College of Engineering will use its $150,000 award to enhance its Summer Engineering Academy, a structured series of math and science enrichment on-campus programs that introduce 7th - 12th grade students throughout the U.S. to the disciplines, challenges and career opportunities of engineering.

A grant of $145,836 will allow the University of Southern California School of Pharmacy to implement the first two years of a projected nine-year innovative and reproducible K-9 science, math and engineering curriculum. USC scientists, engineers, and their research laboratories, in conjunction with elementary and secondary school educators and community experts, are creating the program for Murchison Elementary School and a to-be-determined neighborhood middle school in East Los Angeles.

Keep America Beautiful, Inc., will apply its $100,000 award to underwrite the Toyota Clean Sweep U.S.A. Environmental Education Program that will support a new Keep America Beautiful education web site created by a grant from the U.S. Department of Education. The Toyota USA Foundation award will help promote the use of the education web site, the development of classroom materials and a teacher training initiative that will reach 50,000 6th -- 9th grade teachers and 1.2 million students.

Earth's Birthday Project, a former Foundation award winner, will receive $255,000 over two years to underwrite the creation, development and implementation of the Earth Day Science Symposium, an annual hands-on, inquiry-based science research program for 30,000 middle school science classes and their teachers. The Earth Day Science Symposium, using an endangered species as its subject, will provide the curriculum and materials needed for students to analyze, critique and present current research on an animal in a threatened environment.

The Toyota USA Foundation is a $40 million charitable endowment created to support innovative education programs serving kindergarten through 12th grade in the United States, with special emphasis in the areas of mathematics and science. For additional information about the Toyota USA Foundation, visit http://www.toyota.com/foundation.