Elevate Fund Supports JETS Program to Help Protect the Environment

An RS&H Transportation engineer in our Colorado office, Jeremy Haywood was thrilled to find out that the Colorado Association of Black Professional Engineers and Scientists (CABPES) received a grant from the Elevate Fund.

CABPES’s mission is to encourage and assist African American and other underrepresented minority youths in the pursuit and attainment of career choices in engineering, science and technology professions.

CABPES fulfills its mission through tutoring in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) related classes.

Jeremy, who has been volunteering with CABPES for a year and a half, has donated 30 hours of his time to tutor students in middle and high school.

“I will continue using my math and science knowledge to help middle/high school students excel,” said Jeremy.

RS&H Elevate Fund Helps JETS Program

CABPES is the most recent organization to receive funding from the RS&H Elevate Fund, which was launched last year to help nonprofit organizations focus on what’s important.

The donation to CABPES will support the Junior Engineers and Tomorrow’s Scientists (JETS) program. With the $5,000 donation, the JETS program will be able to build sustainable and green infrastructures to protect the environment.

At the end of each calendar school year, the students in the JETS program present what they’ve learned as well as their capstone project.

Learning Military Style

Tutoring can be challenging when it comes to middle school students, especially when they are 20 years younger than you. How can a tutor connect with their students more efficiently, especially with a military background?

Pushups! Using pushups as a motivation technique helped Jeremy, a current Army Reserve engineer with eight years of active duty experience, connect with his students better.

This technique was used for students that failed to check their work or got a wrong answer. The students started to see the pushups as a challenge to get better, to do more and to beat their tutor instead of a form of punishment.

“If incorporating pushups into the instruction means making math more fun, then I’m all about it,” said Jeremy.

Learn more about CABPES and how to get involved.