TrailUS wins Rep. Troy Nehls’ 2022 Congressional App Challenge in Texas’s 22nd District
Rep. Troy Nehls has named Alexander Park, a Ninth Grader at Cinco Ranch High School, as the winner of the 2022 Congressional App Challenge in Texas’s 22nd District.
When asked what inspired the creation of TrailUS, the student said, ”Last year, in 8th grade, I ran 1 mile in 11 minutes. After practicing, I brought my mile time all the way down to 6:11. While running outside my neighborhood for practice, I realized just how many beautiful trails there were in my close vicinity. My app was made with the goal of encouraging healthier lifestyles for our community, and to make it easy for people to enjoy our local trails.”
The Congressional App Challenge smashed previous participation records in 2022. All told, 9,011 students registered for this year’s competition – creating 2,707 fully-functioning apps for 335 Members of Congress across 50 states, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Mariana Islands, American Samoa, and the District of Columbia. This year’s competition set the record for most student registrations, most apps submitted, most apps per district submitted, and most districts receiving over 20 apps. The wildly successful competition continues to impress upon House Members the importance of computer science education and the need to develop a pipeline of diverse, domestic STEM talent.
The Congressional App Challenge is an official initiative of the U.S. House of Representatives, where Members of Congress host contests in their districts for middle school and high school students, encouraging them to learn to code and inspiring them to pursue careers in computer science. Each participating Member of Congress selects a winning app from their district, and each winning team is invited to showcase their winning app to Congress during our annual #HouseOfCode festival. The program is a public-private partnership made possible through funding from Omidyar Network, AWS, Rise, theCoderSchool, Apple, and others.
The 2023 Congressional App Challenge will launch in June of 2023, and eligible students can pre-register for the competition now.