Ten students from a St. Louis Public Schools (SLPS) magnet school won the top prize in a Hackathon event on February 24, taking home a $10,000 prize for their app, aimed at helping St. Louis students understand their educational options.
The coding students from the Collegiate School of Medicine and BioScience Magnet School were invited to the STEM Student Forum hosted by World Wide Technology, the St. Louis-based technology company founded by David Steward. The teams from each school were tasked with creating a technological solution to an issue in their school’s community and presenting on their finished project for the prize.
The Collegiate School’s team decided to tackle the issue of educational equity, noticing that many SLPS students were unaware of how many different high schools within the district they could choose to attend. They built an app that surveys students and matches them with high schools based on their needs, aiming to make the process more student-centered. The app is called “High School in Hand.”
Alexander Schenk, a mathematics and computer coding teacher at the Collegiate School, attended the event along with his students.
“I’m proud to share that they absolutely knocked it out of the park,” Schenk said. “Among 19 of the best private and public schools across St. Louis, our students won the event. I’m grateful for my students who remind me every single day just how much of an honor and privilege it is to be a teacher.”
The teams presented their work to an audience of over 200 people, including executives from World Wide Technology. Collegiate’s winning project earned them a $10,000 donation to their school’s STEM program.
Villa Duchesne received second place and a cash prize of $5,000. Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School (MICDS) received third place and a cash prize of $2,500 and the remaining schools received $1,000 each for participating.
During the presentation, the Collegiate School students highlighted their own struggles in the high school choice process, which they said often favors students whose parents take an active role in the decision and who come from high-achieving middle schools.
The Collegiate School was founded in 2013 to educate students who plan to go on to a career in medicine or biological sciences. It graduated its first class of 44 students in 2017.
Frederick Steele, principal of the College School, is an enthusiastic supporter of the High School in Hand app.
“We are so proud of our students’ hard work during this Hackathon,” Steele said. “Our team chose to look outside of our own school to solve a problem our local community was having. This is consistent with our mission as a school. Our team of students learned a lot about teamwork, professionalism and STEM during this program, and we hope to participate in next year’s event.”
The World Wide Technology Hackathon event began in 2015; this was its first year at the company’s newly constructed global headquarters. The program has grown from five participating schools to 20.
Joe Koenig, president of World Wide Technology, said the company was “thrilled” with the high attendance.
“We believe this year’s high attendance is a result of the increasing discussions around the importance of STEM education in America – especially for young women and girls,” Koenig said. “We will build on this momentum and continue to push our goals of educating high school students on the importance of STEM, improving academic proficiency, providing competitive advantages for college enrollment and increasing awareness around disciplines in STEM.”
Schenk said he was grateful to World Wide Technology for the donation to the Collegiate School, which he said will make an immediate difference.
