Four FCHS seniors recently received an honorable mention from Congress for their efforts to create a new phone app. The Congressional App Challenge, sponsored by Capital One and Congress, was developed to encourage high school students from across the United States to team up and create a new app to benefit the general public.

Four students in Martha Holt’s Practical Law class–Michael Snipes, Shannon Clark, Elisha Nicholas, and Jake Mills–chose to create and submit a mathematic app to the challenge. “It’s called Mathstrava. It’s a series of equations that involve multiplication, addition, and subtraction. You hit ‘Start’ and it gives you an equation. If it’s correct, you hit ‘Yes’ and if not, you hit ‘No’. If you get it wrong, you go to zero, but if you get it right then you gain a point,” said Nicholas.
The idea for the app itself came from Snipes. “I programmed it. I started most of it in computer science class and when the competition came up I just finished it up and made it look good,” he said. Nicholas and Mills both helped make the video that clearly described the purpose of the app while Clark helped with the designs and responded to important emails relating to the challenge.

“The kids only had about two weeks to create the app and then get all of the information assembled, such as the photos and the press release,” said Holt. After achieving an Honorable Mention for their work, the students were given the opportunity to meet Congressman Robert Hurt in Washington DC. “Oh, it was wonderful. He was so nice and accommodating to the students. He was really interested in their app and what their plans were after they graduated. They talked about what colleges and universities they had applied to, and then he gave us a wonderful mini-history lesson on Virginia and I found out things about Thomas Jefferson that I didn’t know. So it was a lot of fun,” said Holt.

Holt said that she plans on recruiting students for the Congressional App Challenge when it starts up again next school year. “I think that learning more coding and just seeing how many people out there are into coding was the highlight of the experience. They make so many apps that are so advanced… Just the learning experience of talking to other students like us and all over the US made it worthwhile,” said Nicholas.

Holt said that the students were given special passes to go into the House while the members were voting. “It was really nice to see the law makers actually at work and see the format of how the House operates while they vote,” she said.