Pictured are UC Lion Kevin Lehman and RESC Director of Grant Management and STEM Integration Neal Adams.

Provided photo

UNION CITY, Ind. — The Union City Lions Club met on Nov. 8 for the first regular meeting in November. The meal was again served by Diana Dubeansky and consisted of a delicious breakfast casserole and a biscuit.

The program for the evening was presented by Neal Adams, the Randolph Eastern School’s Director of Grant Management and STEM Integration. Adams said the grant management part of his job consists of finding needs, finding funding, writing grants, budget planning, and reporting to the school board. As the director of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) integration, he works with Project Based Learning integration and professional development.

He spoke of the grant money that RESC has earned in the past two years. RESC has been awarded $4,263,529 in competitive grants and an overall grant total of $8,154,861,32. The grant money comes from a variety of sources and is used in a variety of ways. Money from 16 local, state, and national competitive grants helps RESC fund many things including the School Resource Officer, Project Lead the Way, the Alternative School at UCJSHS, programs that help the staff teach employability skills at all grade levels, digital learning, the DECA and KISS programs, and many other things. RESC was awarded $425,000 with the Indiana Excellence in Leading and Learning Award. They were the only school corporation in the state of Indiana to win this award. And most recently RESC was awarded $3.3 million in The Next Generation School Grant which is designed to allow a school to “rethink how we do school.”

The Lions thanked Adams for a good program.