STEP Up for STEM

Lead Sponsors: Hyatt Regency at Lake Tahoe, Parasol Tahoe Community Foundation

Incline Education Fund (IEF) spearheaded the initiative to create the first and currently, only K-12 STEM public school pathway in the state of Nevada. This was accomplished in 2024 by laying the groundwork for unique, innovative STEM programming at each school.

The effort was recognized by the Nevada Governor’s Office of Science, Information & Technology (OSIT) as EACH of the three Incline public schools was named a “Designated STEM School” – ensuring that our schools meet the highest standards of STEM instruction and are models for other schools around the state.

With the generous support of the Incline community and several grant awards, IEF funded the launch of the makerspace program at Incline Elementary, the robotics program at Incline Middle and the engineering & entrepreneurship program at Incline High School. (See a description of each on separate pages under the Technology tab). Each of these programs are accessible to every single Incline public student and create a seamless pathway of STEM curricula from K-12^th grade.

This K-12 STEM pathways ties programs together and helps to build a coordinated curriculum that will give our students the tools and real-world skills to become uniquely prepared for a future college or career in a STEM field.

IEF believes that this programming will also increase student engagement & enrollment and retain & recruit great teachers.

Incline High School receives their Designated STEM School award from NV Governor Lombardo

With the Incline K-12 system now fully aligned, our long-term vision is to ensure that our students develop foundational skills that translate into more advanced STEM opportunities as students progress through their education. This streamlined STEM education will help:

build real world skills for future careers
improve test scores and graduation rates
increase student engagement and enrollment
retain and recruit great teachers

Some of our future goals include:

Establishing mentorship programs where middle and high school students support younger learners in STEM projects.
Creating vertical alignment in robotics, coding, and engineering challenges to maintain student engagement as they advance through school.
Expanding community partnerships to bring in industry professionals for guest lectures, workshops, and real-world applications of STEM.

For more information on the Nevada Governor’s Office of Science, Innovation and Technology, click here.