Ridgefield Park, N.J. – Twelve public schools from across
the country — Alabama, Arizona, California, Florida, New Jersey, New York,
Pennsylvania, Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming — have won $70,000 in
technology as finalists in Samsung’s Solve for Tomorrow contest, a national
competition to raise enthusiasm for science, technology, engineering and math
(STEM) education.
Four grand-prize winners will be chosen by a panel of
judges, and the fifth, the Community Choice winner, will be determined by
public online voting. As the winner of special distinction, the Community
Choice winner receives the additional prize of an assistance dog for their
school.
The grand-prize winners will be announced in March and
invited to a special awards ceremony in Washington D.C. with John Legend, the
Grammy-award winning recording artist.
Online voting for the Community Choice winner is open
until 11:59 p.m. EST, March 12 at
and the Samsung Facebook Solve tab at
Samsung USA – Company – Ridgefield
Park, NJ | Facebook
.
“We are very excited about our finalists and congratulate
them for the ingenuity and hard work they showed through their entries,” said
David Steel, executive VP of corporate strategy for Samsung Electronics North
America. “Solve for Tomorrow empowers students to combine their creativity and
knowledge of science, technology, engineering and math to find solutions to
environmental issues in their communities. We hope that the challenge of this
contest, together with the technology for winning schools, will help inspire
the students of today to become the innovators of tomorrow.
More than 1,500 schools from all 50 states entered the
contest that kicked off in August with an essay submission on how STEM can help
the environment in their community. Twenty-five were picked to receive a video
production kit containing $1,000 of technology — a Samsung laptop, camcorder
and Adobe software — to compete as semi-finalists and in the video phase of
the contest.
These 12 finalists now have a chance to win one of five
grand-prizes valued at $100,000 from Samsung, Microsoft, the Adobe Foundation
and DirecTV, and the finalists are: Davenport School of
the Arts, Davenport, Fla.; Desert Wind Middle School, Maricopa, Ariz.; Groton
High School, Groton, N.Y.; Indian Trails Middle School, Palm Coast, Fla.;
Jackson Hole High School, Jackson, Wyo.; Jefferson Township Middle School, Oak
Ridge, N.J.; Lawrence County High School, Moulton, Ala.; Mercer School, Mercer, Wisc.; Neah
Bay Junior/Senior High School, Neah Bay, Wash.; Pleasant Hills Middle School, Pleasant
Hills, Pa.;Schoharie High School, Schoharie, N.Y.; and Sutter Middle School, Folsom,
Calif.
As part of Samsung Hope for Children, the company’s
philanthropic initiative focusing on health, education, and sustainability,
Solve for Tomorrow encourages teachers to engage students in STEM by raising
enthusiasm for these subjects and addressing the technology gap in classrooms,
Samsung said. With the top 12 schools each receiving at least $70,000 of
technology and the top five receiving at least $100,000 of technology, the
total value of prizes awarded to participating schools total more than $1
million, the company noted.
