For immediate release               

June 4, 2004    

Contact: Karen Ahearn               

Communications Manager                

 412-771-2121

ASSET receives grant from Heinz Endowments

ASSET Inc. has received a $300,000 grant from The Heinz Endowments. The grant is in support of ASSET 's programs designed to strengthen science education in classrooms in southwest Pennsylvania and to expand the successful inquiry-based model into new geographic areas statewide and beyond.

ASSET currently provides K-8 standards-based science materials and teacher professional development programs that directly impacts 3,000 teachers and 63,000 students in 40 school districts and private schools. Students in about 180 ASSET member schools throughout these districts now experience the same standards-based learning materials in their science classrooms and are taught by teachers who receive professional development directly linked to the curriculum and featuring a focus on inquiry-based education.

The largest program of its kind in the state, ASSET is the only one of 22 educational reform programs originally funded by the National Science Foundation that has achieved operational self-sustaining status. It is an independent, nonprofit education reform initiative dedicated to continuously improve the teaching and learning process of teachers with initial efforts in K-8 science education.

The Heinz Endowments supports efforts to make southwestern Pennsylvania a premier place to live and work, a center of learning and educational excellence, and a home to diversity and inclusion. Committed to helping its region thrive as a whole community—economically, ecologically, educationally and culturally—the foundation works within Pennsylvania and elsewhere in the nation to develop solutions to challenges that are national and even international in scope. One of the larges and most innovative independent philanthropic foundations in the country, the Endowments awarded over $54 million in grants in 2003.