Engineers of the Future! See Yourself in Tomorrow with Amazon Future Engineer!

In order for the future of the technology industry to adapt to the ever-growing and complex job market, the industry needs to focus on capturing a more diverse employee base. Right now, most science and tech fields are overwhelmingly led and operated by white and Asian males. The disparity of representation in the tech industry originates from the pattern of minorities being in underserved communities or underfunded school districts. In these communities and districts, it is not uncommon for STEM classes to be taught without proper access to school labs, computers, and Internet access. Right now, the pipeline for students in these communities to succeed in the tech industry is weak, but it doesn’t have to be. Enter, the Amazon Future Engineer.

Amazon Future Engineer (AFE) is a program aimed at increasing access to computer science and STEM education for students in these underrepresented communities. The program offers career exploration opportunities through tours of Amazon Fulfillment Centers, mentorship from tech professionals, and learning experiences that mesh media and entrepreneurship to advance racial equity. The AFE Scholarship program aids high school seniors who are interested in computer science by helping fund their software engineering degree at an accredited 4-year college or university. CoderZ has partnered with AFE through the Amazon Cyber Robotics Challenge (ACRC) – an online learning experience challenging students to learn the fundamentals of computer science and robotics in order to program the Amazon Hercules robot to deliver a package.

As part of the ACRC experience, students can hear two AFE Scholarship recipients share their personal journey into the world of computer science, and how they plan to apply it in the future. However, the partnership has since expanded! Amazon Future Engineer is now providing free access to CoderZ’s virtual robotics learning modules to Title 1 schools across the United States. This partnership fuels the momentum behind improving the STEM curriculum taught to young students and keeps them engaged in virtual robotics with CoderZ’s web-based teachings. Through this collaboration, we hope to make online learning about computer programming, robotics, and STEM more accessible than ever before.

To learn more about this partnership and how the Amazon Future Engineer program and the Amazon Cyber Robotics Challenge can transform your educational experience, subscribe to our newsletter, and follow along on this blog. You can join the conversation on social media to hear directly from our following why how the AFE and CoderZ partnership can transform student engagement in STEM.