Gilead Foundation Awards Ed Fund $500,000 to Focus on STEM Education

The San Mateo-Foster City Education Foundation is pleased to announce that we have been awarded a grant in the amount of $500,000 by the Gilead Foundation. “We are immensely grateful for Gilead Foundation’s investment in local students and STEM education,” said SMFC Education Foundation Board President Annie Tsai. With these funds, the Education Foundation will be able to support the implementation of LEGO Duplo and LEGO Technix STEM curriculum to support bringing to life the multi-year strategic initiative beginning Fall 2022 “Every Child an Engineer”. In addition, with these funds the Foundation is pleased to support the launch of the Paxton-Patterson curriculum in Grades 6-8, providing middle school students with visibility into a myriad of professions in various STEM fields.

“With the implementation of LEGO in our lower grades, we are excited to bring STEM into everyday learning for our students,” said San Mateo-Foster City School District Superintendent Diego Ochoa. “For our middle school students, Paxton Patterson is an important curriculum to expose our students to. Especially in Silicon Valley where kids may automatically associate ‘software developer’ with STEM but may not see that robotics, mechanics, nursing, science research, trades, and many other roles are also STEM.”

“We are proud to support the Education Foundation and SMFCSD,” said Keeley Wettan, Senior Vice President, Legal, Gilead Sciences and Board Chair, Gilead Foundation. “Investing in our local community is a priority for the Gilead Foundation, especially to advance STEM education and equity in our schools. Today’s students are tomorrow’s innovators - we look forward to some of them making key scientific discoveries in the future, perhaps even at Gilead one day.”