Agust­aWest­land, an aeronautics company with facilities in Northeast Philadelphia, donated $100,000 to St. Martin of Tours, an Independence Mission School, in late March through the Opportunity Scholarship Tax Credit (OSTC) Program. The company plans to augment the donation through a partnership with students and teachers at the school to cultivate future engineering leaders and advance manufacturing in Philadelphia.

The collaboration will allow students to gain exposure to the practical applications of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) within aviation. AgustaWestland will partner with faculty members at St. Martin of Tours by providing them with supplementary materials and helping them integrate aviation principles into their lesson plans.

In partnering with St. Martin of Tours to develop a unique and engaging STEM curriculum, AgustaWestland joins the ranks of companies nationwide seeking to ignite the spark for STEM education in urban school communities. Helping students — like those attending St. Martin of Tours — grow their interest in these subjects and, ultimately, careers in STEM-related fields is more than just a way to help grow the workforce. It will also help ensure that the workforce for STEM jobs is more diverse.

In 2012, minorities made up less than 5 percent of the STEM-based workforce, according to the US Department of Labor — a fact which will need to change, according to experts, for the US to meet the need for employees in the fast growing sector.

Programs like OSTC are vital avenues to bring this type of learning to inner-city communities. OSTC tax dollars, like those contributed to St. Martin of Tours by AgustaWestland, are specifically designated to boost academic outcomes in areas with low-performing public schools.