The Guilford County Education Alliance is partnering with several Triad businesses this summer to conduct a pilot program for a group of middle and high school teachers.

Eleven educators in Guilford County are participating in the 2012 STEM Fellows program , in an effort to make science and math more relevant and fun for their students.

STEM stands for science, technology, engineering and math.

"Teachers in middle and high schools in Guilford County Schools in math and science were invited to apply and were competitively selected to participate in STEM externships in STEM industries in our county," said Margaret Arbuckle, executive Director of the Guilford County Education Alliance.

Seven Guilford County businesses are providing real life learning opportunities for the educators. Arbuckle said they range from science-based companies like Syngenta to wealth management companies like Lincoln Financial.

"They are actually putting on lab coats and working with the researchers in the labs, so it’s a combination of things and at the end of the program, the teachers will create a set of lesson plans that they will take back to their classroom and share with their colleagues," said Arbuckle.

The three-week program was launched last Monday at the Joint School of Nanoscience and Nanoengineering in Greensboro.

The STEM Fellows program is funded with a $25,000 grant from the Piedmont Natural Gas Foundation. President of the Foundation, Timothy Greenhouse said the program is a good resource for helping educate students about future career opportunities.

"These are the types of areas that we need to focus on and if we don’t have that knowledgeable workforce to support our nation in the future, we are going to be behind the eight ball," said Greenhouse.

Greenhouse added, "This program will really give them the opportunity to look at industries like Piedmont Natural Gas or the energy industry as a whole to be able to be viable components of that in the future".