Attention all science and math teachers of Georgia! Do you want to gain more hands-on STEM experience and increase your efficacy in the classroom? Would you like to participate in groundbreaking university- and industry-based research programs? Do you want to be a student again? Are you missing the lab and wishing you could return for a while? If you answered “YES!” to any of these questions, the Georgia Intern Fellowships for Teachers (GIFT) Summer Program just might be the perfect way to make your summer exceptional! 
Founded in 1991 as a major initiative of the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Center for Education Integrating Science, Mathematics, and Computing (CEISMC) (pronounced “seismic”), GIFT offers summer STEM internships to middle and high school science, mathematics and technology teachers. Why? Because CEISMC’s goal is MathSP’s goal is your goal: to ensure that Georgia’s K-12 students receive the best possible preparation in STEM as they strive to find their place in the world.
How It Works
Successful GIFT applicants are placed in industry workplaces and university laboratories that match their educational background and instructional goals. For 4-7 weeks, teachers are provided with priceless opportunities to directly experience the ways in which industrial and academic scientists and researches confront STEM-based problems, generate hypotheses, design and develop experiments, interpret data, troubleshoot, communicate findings and generate and implement workplace solutions. And the learning doesn’t end in the summer. Throughout the following year, GIFT hosts professional development meetings, workshops and discussions groups. The guiding intention is to build a community of STEM educators and lifetime learners who are committed to empowering their students to achieve in STEM. 
GIFT Gifts You and Your Students
As educators ourselves, we at MathSP know just how difficult it can be to open students’ eyes to the wonder, beauty, significance and practicality of STEM. GIFT wants to fill your teaching toolbox with countless applications and stories that you can use to inspire and empower your students in the fall and beyond. Even more than this, GIFT wants to reignite your wonder and admiration for STEM. Toward this end, GIFT will place you in an environment that provides real world applications for the subjects you teach, enabling you to enhance your content-based knowledge and acquire practical examples of science, technology, engineering and mathematics applications that will enrich example-based classroom instruction. To learn more, visit GIFT’s website.