Next Step wins Rep. Marc Veasey’s 2022 Congressional App Challenge in Texas’s 33rd District
Rep. Marc Veasey has named Lucas Helms of Townview Talented and Gifted (School for the Talented and Gifted) and Layla Carr of Townview Talented and Gifted (School for the Talented and Gifted) as the winners of the 2022 Congressional App Challenge in Texas’s 33rd District.
When asked what inspired the creation of Next Step, the students said, ”We’ve faced the rigorous education system for the majority of our life, as have millions of other students. We’ve seen countless cases of students who are burnt out, anxious, and extremely worried about their future. We want to combat this issue, by supplying students with a resource they can use to easily plan their next step and their mental well-being.”
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.