PPG’s local industrial coatings plant in Mount Vernon, Illinois, helped to get a $1,000 Innovative Classroom Grant from the PPG Foundation to support science-in-art projects for Fairfield Community High School students in Art Teacher Natalie Hurd’s classes. The science and art materials purchased with the funding are providing hands-on lessons about solubility, matter, colloids, crystalline and amorphous solids, polarity, and more to 30 painting students.

Hurd said the projects help her teach students how to experiment with materials, tools, techniques and processes to enhance the communication of ideas through art and science.

The PPG Foundation’s Innovative Classroom Grants program encourages PPG employees to connect with their communities by supporting educational initiatives.

“It is wonderful to support projects that reveal how science and technology are incorporated into art,” said Chris Campbell, PPG Mount Vernon plant manager and PPG TRUEFINISH™ operations manager. “While technology is becoming a huge part of our lives, we must continue to stress the importance of learning the science concepts behind it.”