CAC Awarded the Society for Science and the Public’s STEM Action Grant

The Society for Science and the Public seeks to improve participation of under-served students in STEM fields. In order to accomplish this goal, the Society created the STEM Action Grant Program, which supports non-profits that aim to make this mission a reality. As their grantee, this grant helps the Congressional App Challenge encourage students from across the nation to learn or cultivate their coding skills and submit their own, original apps in the Challenge.

In last year’s 2018 Challenge, the CAC had 4x as many African American, 5x as many Hispanic, 3x as many Native American, and 2x as many female students as compared to Silicon Valley’s workforce diversity metrics. In addition, nearly 1/3 of all participants submitted apps from rural districts. These participant demographics surpassed the tech industry’s average gender, racial, and geographic diversity. 

We are so glad to have achieved this level of participation and plan to surpass these measures in this year’s Challenge. With the ultimate goal of inspiring today’s students to be tomorrow’s STEM leaders, we strive to further increase minority groups’ participation in the Challenge so that diversity in the tech workforce will reflect the diversity in this country.