Amazon Future Engineer Teachers to Vie for $25K STEM Prize Packages

  • By Dian Schaffhauser
  • 02/20/20

Amazon's Future Engineer program has just increased its STEM largesse. The company will be granting prize bundles worth $25,000 to seven teachers who currently participate in the Amazon Future Engineer program. The deadline for applications is March 12, 2020 at 3 p.m. Central time. Applicants may be nominated by somebody else in their school or district or they can start the application process for themselves.

The Future Engineer program funds computer science courses at more than 2,000 high schools, according to Amazon. The goal is to support students in underserved and underrepresented communities. Amazon supports the work of delivering full-year AP courses, both AP CS A (an introductory class) and AP CS Principles, particularly to those schools that haven't offered AP CS courses before. The courses are made available in a blended format through Edhesive and Code.org. Resources provided through the program include curriculum; teacher support; professional development; career networking opportunities; and access to AWS Educate, a portal for instructors teaching cloud technology to students in K-20.

Seven award recipients will be chosen from among the applicants, including two high school teachers from the eastern United States, two from the west, two in central states, and one from among teachers who have received Amazon Future Engineer Robotics grants. Winners will receive customized prizes worth more than $25,000. Those may include donations for the classroom, STEM toys and activities and school upgrades. They'll also receive all-expenses paid trips to re:MARS, the company's artificial intelligence event for machine learning, automation, robotics and space. That conference takes place June 16-19 in Las Vegas.

Judging will be done by Scholarship America. The winners will be chosen based on their commitment to promoting diversity and inclusion within CS education, a recommendation from a school administrator and their own "compelling, personal anecdotes about their school and students."

Award winners will be named in April or May.

About the Author

Dian Schaffhauser is a former senior contributing editor for 1105 Media's education publications THE Journal, Campus Technology and Spaces4Learning.

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