Purchasing science equipment costs money, a lot of money. Thus, school corporations have a difficult time properly teaching science to students. However, help has rolled its way in.

The University of Southern Indiana purchased two trucks, $30,000 apiece, in order to provide schools in nine southwestern Indiana counties with the proper equipment. The program is called STEM, which stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.

Allison Grabert, science coordinator, said USI loads the trucks up with equipment and sends the trucks to various schools to loan the equipment at no cost for about one week.

Grabert plays an instrumental role in the STEM program. She takes orders from teachers, works the Pott College of Science departments, helps with curriculum development and makes deliveries. She also updates and maintains the STEM website.

Grabert taught in Kentucky for eight years before coming to USI. She taught four years at the middle school level and four years at the high school level.

“It’s gotten me back into the classroom,” she said. “I think once you’re a teacher you’re always a teacher and you kind of look for those opportunities to get back into the classroom, so it really is refreshing to get back into the classroom.

“Right now I deal with teachers predominately, and whenever I can get back into the classroom and work with the kids in hands on experiences, it really kind of makes my week. I look forward to those opportunities.”

The trucks have traveled to the counties of Posey, Vanderburgh, Gibson, Warrick, Pike, Knox, Spencer, Dubois and Perry since the program started in fall 2009, Grabert said.

Elementary, middle and high schools use the lending service.

The two trucks combined to travel 2,946 miles and spent 71 and a half hours on the road last fall delivering equipment, Grabert said. The longest trip was nearly four hours.

Grabert said it takes a lot of choreographing and time management to prepare for a trip to a school.

STEM has about $300,000 worth of equipment to loan to schools, she said. Incubators, human skeleton models, electrostatic generators, laptops, dissecting microscopes and magnetic field sensors are just a few examples of the equipment available to schools.

“You’ve got to have some brawn in there too because some of this equipment is not just ‘you pick it up and throw it in the back,’” Grabert said. “Some of this equipment are six foot long, 15 pound tracks and we’ve got 14 of those. It definitely takes a little bit of brains and a little bit of brawn too because some of the equipment is not easy to move around.”

She said the program opens up an array of career opportunities for students.

Grabert said the mission is to prepare students for 21st Century STEM jobs, a popular career area.

She also said the program helps students learn to problem solve, which will help them in everyday life even if they do not choose a STEM related career.

Several sources have helped fund this program. USI received a three year a three-year $600,000 Workforce Innovation in Regional Economic Development grant in 2007, a five-year $1.2 million National Science Foundation award, and an open-ended $150,000 annual Lilly Foundation grant.

Grabert said she hopes USI can get another truck stationed at the Crane Division, Naval Surface Warfare Center because of the partnership. This would allow USI’s STEM program to reach even more counties.

USI also provides summer workshops for teachers. The workshops cover topics in biology, chemistry, geology, physics, math and engineering.

Kara Becker, who is the director, said she and Grabert go into classrooms and assist teachers with the equipment.

“It gives the teacher a wider variety of ways to teach the standards that are required by the state,” Becker said.

Becker said the workshops allow teachers to become familiar with a variety of equipment before using it in the classroom.

She also drives the trucks to schools, and said she has enjoyed being able to help out teachers and students.

“Being able to work in the classrooms with teachers,” she said. “Watching students get excited getting to use some really cool equipment that they probably wouldn’t have gotten to otherwise.”

Teachers need to fill out a form and send an e-mail to USI’s STEM program in order to obtain the science equipment.

Becker said the program is currently all grant based.

She said the trucks have helped generate student interest in USI.

“Students get to see a lot of equipment that they can use at the university,” she said. “It helps better prepare them for lab classes when the get here, and it gives them a chance to actively learn science and math.”