KC STEM Alliance, UMKC earn $2.5M grant
September 29, 2015 | Bobby Burch
A multi-million dollar grant will aim to boost diversity in Kansas City’s healthcare workforce.
KC STEM Alliance and the UMKC School of Nursing and Health Studies recently received a $2.5 million grant. The funds will create KC HealthTracks to introduce more low-income and minority students to healthcare careers. KC STEM Alliance works to bolster area science, technology, engineering and mathematics education.
“This is an incredible opportunity to help students think beyond traditional entry-level jobs in healthcare and develop a pipeline of academically ready students who can diversify our healthcare workforce,” Laura Loyacono, executive director of KC STEM Alliance, said in a release.
The grant, awarded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, assists students in 11 high schools from seven Kansas City-area school districts preparing for college and careers in biomedical sciences. Students in the KC HealthTracks program will have access to improved STEM curriculum, mentors, college campus visits, extensive lab experiences, tutoring and ACT preparation.
Featured Business

2015 Startups to Watch
stats here
Related Posts on Startland News
Former KC startup eyes nationwide education revamp with merger
About a year after a move from Kansas City to St. Louis, education tech firm myEDmatch has merged with a nationwide teacher recruitment platform. Led by CEO Alicia Herald, myEDmatch will combine its platform connecting teachers and school job openings with St. Louis-based Teachers-Teachers, a firm that focuses on teacher recruitment. The new, yet-to-be-named entity…
State of Entrepreneurship to tackle national ‘startup deficit’
In her second address to the nation, Kauffman Foundation CEO Wendy Guillies on Wednesday will present the seventh-annual “State of Entrepreneurship Address.” Guillies will travel to the National Press Club in Washington D.C. to address the nation’s long-term decline in new business creation, which has created a so-called “startup deficit.” Guillies, who was appointed as…
LaunchCode kicks off Kansas City office with $250K boost
Fresh off its expansion to Kansas City, LaunchCode will tap additional capital from the Missouri Technology Corporation to boost its operations focused on tech workforce development. With a visit Thursday from Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon at the Sprint Accelerator, the MTC announced that it would inject an additional $250,000 into LaunchCode, which expanded from St.…
