Mathtivity Wins Rep. Connolly’s (VA-11) 2019 Congressional App Challenge
Rep. Gerald Connolly has named a Alexandria student as the winner of the Congressional App Challenge in Virginia’s 11th district. Justice High School’s Andrew Tran submitted Mathtivity, an app that offers hyper-personalized STEM education through videos, practice problems, and live user interaction & feedback.
When asked why they were passionate about creating a STEM educational assistance app the student replied, “Attending a school with an underprivileged student body, I witness firsthand poverty’s effects. It troubled me that money limited students’ ability to seek higher knowledge, and I had to change this.” The student hopes to encourage other students to better their communities by using their computer science skills.
Over 10,000 students registered for the 2019 Congressional App Challenge. These students created and submitted 2,177 functioning apps, marking the end of the most successful Congressional App Challenge to date. All told, 304 Members of Congress hosted Congressional App Challenges in their districts across 48 states, Puerto Rico, the Mariana Islands, and Washington, D.C.
The CAC is an 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. The non-profit Internet Education Foundation provides the CAC with supplemental staffing and support. In the five years of the Congressional App Challenge, the program has yielded 1134 App Challenges across 48 states. Thousands of functional apps have been created by over 25,000 students, and participant demographics surpass all industry diversity metrics.