The School District 6 Board of Trustees on Monday evening accepted two grants, totaling $50,000, to be directed towards science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields in the form of a zSpace STEM Lab. The lab is a 3-D virtual reality system designed for student-centered learning.

The STEM software applications cover a range of topics related to those fields, with over 1,000 models, ranging from the anatomy of a carbon atom to how speed relates energy to momentum, to the anatomy of the human body.

The lab will be housed in the junior high and should be up and running in January.

Superintendent Steve Bradshaw pointed out that the program is being used in medical schools for the access it allows to explore the human body in a new way.

A grant given by the Weyerhaeuser Giving Fund totaled $40,000. The Weyerhauser Giving Fund’s mission is to improve the quality of life in communities where Weyerhaeuser has a presence.

“Weyerhaeuser has really stepped up to become an incredible supporter of education,” Bradshaw said in a press release about the grant. “Plum Creek had always been a critical backer of our schools in the Flathead Valley and we were thrilled Weyerhaeuser has committed to continuing that tradition. Weyerhaeuser’s grant gives our school district an opportunity no other schools in Montana have.”

At the board meeting, Bradshaw added that although this program had caught his attention last year, the price tag made him uncomfortable taking it out of the district’s general fund.

Glacier Bank gave a grant of $10,000, also to be directed towards the zSpace lab.