Glassboro High School to Offer an Advanced Placement Computer Science Course with Amazon Future Engineer
Press Release from Jody Rettig – Glassboro Public School District
More than 1,000 high schools across the country are participating in Amazon Future Engineer, an initiative making computer science available to all students.
Amazon Future Engineer is a four-part, childhood-to-career program that works to inspire and educate 10 million children and young adults each year to pursue careers in the fast-growing field of computer science and coding – Amazon Future Engineer focuses on access for all.
Glassboro–Glassboro High School is now participating in the Amazon Future Engineer program and will receive funding from Amazon to start offering a new computer science class to students this fall. GHS is one of more than 1,000 high schools across the country currently signed up for Amazon Future Engineer, a national program aimed at making computer science accessible to all students. With more than 1,000 high schools signed up, Amazon Future Engineer will serve tens of thousands of high school students.
“We are excited to be part of Amazon Future Engineer! Thanks to this grant, secured by teachers Michele Keating and Barbara Jones, GHS will have an AP Computer Science course in the fall,” said Dr. Danielle F. Sneathen, GHS Principal.
The course will be a nice complement to the GHS STEM/BIOMED Academy, which offers school choice and Glassboro resident students advanced learning opportunities in science, technology, engineering, math, and biomedical studies. However, GHS students will not need to be academy members to sign up for the new advanced course.
With Amazon Future Engineer’s funding, GHS will offer the AP Computer Science course through curriculum provider, Edhesive. Amazon’s funding provides preparatory lessons, tutorials, and professional development for teachers, fully-sequenced and paced digital curriculum for students, and live online support every day of the week for both teachers and students. This full-year course is designed to inspire, prepare, and propel students in their pursuit of computer science education. All students participating in this program will receive a free membership to AWS Educate which provides them with free access to computing power in the AWS Cloud for their coding projects and content to learn about cloud computing.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that by 2020 there will be 1.4 million computer-science-related jobs available and only 400,000 computer science graduates with the skills to apply for those jobs. Computer science is the fastest growing profession within the Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) field, but only 8% of STEM graduates earn a computer science degree, with a tiny minority from underprivileged backgrounds. And, underprivileged students are 8 to 10 times more likely to pursue college degrees in computer science if they have taken AP computer science in high school.
“We want to ensure that every child, especially those from underprivileged communities, has an opportunity to study computer science,” said Jeff Wilke, CEO Worldwide Consumer, Amazon. “We are excited more than 1,000 schools will now provide these courses, and look forward to adding 1,000 more schools over the coming months.”
Launched in November, 2018, Amazon Future Engineer is a four-part childhood-to-career program intended to inspire, educate, and prepare children and young adults from underprivileged, underrepresented, and underserved communities to pursue careers in the fast-growing field of computer science. Each year, Amazon Future Engineer aims to inspire more than 10 million kids to explore computer science; provide over 100,000 young people in over 2,000 high schools access to Intro or AP Computer Science courses; award 100 students with four-year $10,000 scholarships, as well as offer guaranteed and paid Amazon internships to gain work experience. Amazon Future Engineer is part of Amazon’s $50 million investment in computer science/STEM education. In addition, Amazon Future Engineer has donated more than $10 million to organizations that promote computer science/STEM education across the country.
Schools, administrators, and teachers interested in applying to any stage of the Amazon Future Engineer program can apply and learn more at https://edhesive.com/amazon/apply. For more information about Amazon Future Engineer, check out https://blog.aboutamazon.com/community/cracking-the-code.
To learn more information about GHS, go to https://www.gpsd.us and select Glassboro High School.