The Future of Tech in Tennessee Gets Brighter Each Year

Dev Catalyst is an educational program rooted in developing student coders, and Awardaganza is an event hosted every year at theCO to celebrate the hard work and dedication of the students who have participated in the Dev Catalyst competition— a high school coding competition that allows students to design and execute a variety of projects that are judged and ranked by aesthetic, code complexity, ease of use, and content.

This year’s program included 18 schools throughout Tennessee, with over 600 students participating in Novice Web Development, Data Development, and Hardware Dev Project categories.

This year, in place of The Rhodes Barnette Educator award that is usually awarded to an outstanding coding teacher, Dev Catalyst recognized all the teachers of winning students for their hard work and perseverance during this difficult year.

“2020-2021 Dev Catalyst Champion School” awarded to a school that had excellent participation and performance in the Dev Catalyst program: Chester County High School

And finally “Dev Catalyst Code Champions” the students who have won the MacBook Pro: Nathaniel Anderson (Chester County HS), Madison Granger (Chester County HS), Braden Bell (Lexington HS), Kamden Edens (Lexington HS), Jeb Holt (Lexington HS), Lana Lam (Madison Academic HS), Alyssa Young (Madison Academic HS), Mya Curry (Madison Academic HS), Michael Crockett (Madison Academic HS), Steven Pjontek (Madison Academic HS), Shrey Patel (Madison Academic HS), Christian Wilcox (Madison Academic HS), Michael Eberle (Madison Academic HS), Laila Houston (Madison Academic HS), Alexia Baker (Madison Academic HS), Alaina Gowan (Madison Academic HS), William Christlieb (Scott Hill HS), and Ayden Parmely (McNairy Central HS).

In its eighth year, the Dev Catalyst program provides students access to high quality, industry-relevant tech education. Students access various online learning platforms, code editors and more. Dev Catalyst teachers are supported through Educator Workshops, classroom resources, and tech video content to use throughout the program.  

Recognizing the importance for designers and developers in our ever changing workforce, Dev Catalyst was created to spark students’ interest in technology-related fields and provide the high demand, high wage career skills to students throughout the region. To find out more about Dev Catalyst and all it offers, click here.