On Monday, The Boeing Company announced that it would invest $1 million in the New Orleans-based educational program STEM NOLA, “to support the construction of the organization’s state-of-the-art STEM Innovation Hub.”
The investment will help fund a 40,000-square-foot building that will become the STEM NOLA organization’s Innovation Hub, and will include classrooms, meeting spaces and laboratories to give kids hands-on exposure to science and technology-based career paths. Boeing employs approximately 1,100 people in the state of Louisiana.
STEM NOLA, opened in 2013 by former Tulane University engineering professor Dr. Calvin Mackie, is a nonprofit organization focused on providing science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education and resources to K-12 kids in New Orleans. Among its initiatives are STEM-based summer camps throughout Louisiana, many of them free for participants.
“We appreciate the support from Boeing and others helping to make this exciting STEM laboratory a reality,” said Mackie. “Our goal is to create a destination for STEM innovation, entrepreneurship and workforce development.”
“Boeing invests in STEM education because it is the rocket fuel that will propel the aerospace industry forward–including our future space programs,” Ted Colbert, CEO of Boeing Defense, Space and Security, said in a statement. “These bright, young minds will one day take us to new deep space destinations, including Mars and beyond. And with the help of nonprofit partners like STEM NOLA, I know we’re setting the future generation of aerospace leaders on the path to long-term success.”
