Scholarship Season is Here!

The second semester of the school year is a time of excitement and expectation for graduating seniors. Their life after high school is about to begin. Part of that excitement is the anticipation of college acceptances and scholarships. The SAISD Foundation is proud to announce that thanks to some fabulous donors, there are 7 all new scholarships available for the Class of 2022.  New scholarships include the Alpha Scholarship Program, Luther Burbank Endowed Scholarship for First-Generation College Students, Gerald F. Doebbler Award for Chemistry, Tiffany Dunlap Memorial Endowed Scholarship, Ana and Armando Lopez Academic Scholarship, the Kenneth D. Lynn Memorial Scholarship, and EnCap Flatrock Midstream Excellence in STEM, a four-year scholarship that includes the opportunity for an internship during college. Scholarships are an important piece of our efforts to increase post-secondary success  - persistence - for our students. Click here to view these and all of the scholarships we offer that support 100+ students each year! Follow our announcement series on social @SAISDFoundation #NewIn2022.

College Tour Impact

College Tour experiences like this one are made possible by donors like the Valero Energy Foundation and the Pipeline for College Success, and individual donors who support parents being able join them. Of course, it is the hard work of our students and their high school college-bound advisors that get them to this stage. In the last four years of this program, 80% of students that participated in a college tour experience enrolled in a 4-year college/university.

Last spring when Juan Morales, automotive technology instructor at Lanier, applied for an innovative grant from the SAISD Foundation, he had one goal: to provide his students with a project that combined their academic math skills with their work in automotive technology. Our support funded drones that he and his students are using to measure turning angles on a car with proper alignment versus a car that has been damaged and has poor alignment. While driving cars and flying drones sounds like fun, it also involves a lot of math including geometry and trigonometry.

With the help of Lanier math teacher, Ms. Embry, Raymond is one of the students that has been working on formulas that predict the turning radius of a car's wheels. When we visited, fellow students Daniel and Raymond set up the experiment using the drones to measure the path their test vehicle takes. Raymond's calculations are within .2 meters of the vehicle's actual trajectory. He admits he still has some work to do. His "work" can be duplicated by a $90,000 alignment machine that is in the shop, but Raymond wants to figure out the math himself.

When asked what this project has shown him, Daniel responded, "When you think of automotive you don't think of math or angles. This kind of opened my eyes and gave me a new view of automotive. It isn't just picking up a wrench. There are a lot of systems and steps for everything to make your car run right." 

Like an automobile, this is a project with a lot of moving parts. Juan and his students stay late after school to work on their project outside of class time. It is a wonder to behold watching these young men speak with passion about their project and the math that goes along with it. 

"I want them to be able to connect high-end math to real-world applications," said Mr. Morales. "The beauty of this innovative grant is that it is going to continue to grow. I would like to get more math teachers involved to come down to the shop to do more project-based learning".  Overall, the automotive technology program is growing! This year Lanier hired a second teacher to meet the growing demand. The enrollment for the program has grown to 146 students. We have also worked to bring in an annual scholarship for a graduating senior continuing their education at St. Philips College and donations of tool kits for students to go straight into the workforce. Lanier is one of the few high school automotive programs in San Antonio and the only one in SAISD.

Welcome!

In January four new board members were appointed to three-year terms on the SAISD Foundation Board of Directors. We are highlighting two this month and will highlight two more next month. Of special note, Tiffany Grant and Ben Jordan both built their foundation in SAISD with Tiffany graduating from Brackenridge and Ben from Highlands. Welcome to our robust leadership team! To read more about Tiffany, Ben and all of our directors click here.

Thank you to the companies that have already committed to our 2022 Golf FORE Excellence Tournament including, Escamilla & Poneck, CPS Energy, Firstmark Credit Union, Brooks, Cavender Cares, Government Affairs Professionals of Texas, Linebarger, Estrada Hinojosa Investment Bankers and VLK Architects! Thank you too to our fabulous Golf Committee Chair Julian Casillas and Golf Committee members: Jose Campos, Connie Gonzalez, Tony Jaso, Andrea Narendorf, and Harold Oliver who will be reaching out soon.