A Missouri high school is getting a major upgrade to its biodiesel center. Officials at Rockwood Summit High School in Fenton, Mo. broke ground on the new Monsanto Education Center for Sustainable Solutions, a facility to teach students the value of renewable fuels, such as biodiesel.
The Monsanto Company, Missouri Soybean Merchandising Council, National Biodiesel Board, National Corn Growers Association, St. Louis Community Foundation and Rockwood Summit High School announced the establishment of the Monsanto Education Center for Sustainable Solutions in January 2014.
The center will be housed in a new building constructed on Rockwood Summit’s campus and will include an area where students and advisors can plant row crops to study how plants such as corn and soybeans produce a renewable source of fuel.
The Monsanto Education Center for Sustainable Solutions will serve as a STEM (Science Technology Engineering Math) educational resource for teachers and students in the St. Louis community who want to experience hands-on, project-based learning on the fundamentals of biofuels, specifically biodiesel.
For the past four years, the RSHS biodiesel project has become a leading program for K-12 STEM in the St. Louis region. Student work includes executing experiments to convert waste vegetable oil into biodiesel and designing methods to test biodiesel quality.
Monsanto donated $100,000 to the building of the facility. You can read more about the project here.