The Eli Lilly Foundation is awarding Indianapolis Public Schools a $5.5 million grant to be used over the next five years to expose and better prepare students for entry into STEM fields.
The grant is part of the district’s launch of “Destination 2032,” which aims to introduce more rising middle schoolers to science, technology, engineering and math curriculum.
The program’s expanded middle school experience will first begin at William Penn Middle School 49 for the 2025-26 school year, with plans to expand it to Arlington Middle School by the 2027-28 school year. The funding will also provide new hands-on experiences for students on the STEM track entering Arsenal Tech High School.
IPS Superintendent Aleesia Johnson described the funding as “transformative” for IPS students, noting that it will provide targeted support for traditionally underrepresented groups in STEM fields, such as Black and Latino students.
“We believe that Destination 2032 will change lives, not just by what our students learn, but in what they believe and who they believe they can become in their futures,” Johnson said on July 15 when announcing the grant at William Penn School.
The work at the middle school level will create the “Lilly Foundation STEM Scholars” program, which aims to enhance the curriculum and provide more hands-on project work for students in grades 6-8 at both schools.
The middle schools will also eventually be equipped with a “future center” similar to programs already existing at IPS’s four flagship high schools. William Penn’s future center is planned to open in January 2026.
The future centers will have a dedicated staff member with the purpose of helping with academic work, career exploration, and providing direct connections to STEM industry experiences or higher education.
The “Lilly Foundation STEM High School Fellowship” will build on what happens at the middle school level, focusing on a specific cohort of students at Arsenal Tech High School who decide to pursue a STEM pathway.
The program at Arsenal Tech will be similarly modeled after the IU Health Fellowship at Crispus Attucks High School, which provides students with hands-on experience in the health and medical fields.
The STEM fellowship at Arsenal Tech is expected to be launched in two to three years, coinciding with the transition of this year’s rising sixth graders into high school.
William Penn STEM teacher Luc Sproles, who also won IPS’s Teacher of the Year for 2026, said that he thinks this grant funding will go a long way in helping his students, especially amid a backdrop of state funding cuts the district is likely to see in the coming years.
“I think this will be an amazing opportunity to give them some career experience and really show them the representation and give them some belief in their abilities, which can go a long way for students who don’t see themselves represented in things like medical fields, in engineering, where they’ve systemically been excluded,” Sproles told IndyStar.
Some examples of STEM classes already happening at William Penn are things like coding, teaching kids how to build their own app, robotics teams, architecture, agriculture, biology and medicine curriculum.
Whole grade levels will often participate in large collaborative group projects as an end-of-semester project, like building their own mini golf courses or mousetrap cars and racing them in their own “Indy 500.”
William Penn’s seventh-grade math teacher, Marissa Reiken, said the school’s work on integrating STEM education into every subject taught at the school has shown up in students’ excitement to come to school every day.
“To see kids who are normally like ‘math is hard and I don’t like math’ to be excited to come in every day and work on their project is pretty amazing,” Reiken told IndyStar.
Contact IndyStar K-12 education reporter Caroline Beck at 317-618-5807 or CBeck@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter (X): @CarolineB_Indy.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: IPS gets $5.5M Lilly grant to expand STEM education at middle, high schools
Reporting by Caroline Beck, Indianapolis Star / Indianapolis Star
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
