Erika Tan, a junior at Freehold High School, has been named a grand prize winner in the 2017 Google Code-in. Erika is the fourth winner of the contest to come from Freehold High School, Freehold Borough.
According to the Freehold Regional High School District, Google Code-in is a global online contest that encourages teenage students to use a range of skills like coding, design, quality assurance, research and outreach while contributing to open source software.
Students work with mentors from organizations who lend a helping hand as the participants learn what it is like to work on an open source project. Erika worked with Systers Community, a community for women technologists.
Google Code-in 2017 had 3,555 students participate from 78 countries. Fifty students including Erika were chosen as grand prize winners. Erika completed 30 tasks as a participant in the contest. As a part of her prize, Erika will receive a trip to Google’s campus in California this summer to meet with Google engineers, her mentors and the other grand prize winners.
Erika, who is a student in the district’s medical sciences magnet program, plans on being a mentor for the Systers Community next year, according to the press release.
In other district news, Freehold High School music director Eric Gross has been chosen as the winner of the 2018 Monmouth Arts Education Award for Outstanding Educator in Performing Arts.
The Outstanding Educator in Performing Arts award is presented each year at the Monmouth Arts Education Awards, which honors individuals and organizations in Monmouth County who continue to inspire young artists in the community. Gross will be recognized at an awards reception on March 14.
And, Hope Hershman, a sophomore at Freehold Township High School, recently received a President’s Volunteer Service Award.
According to its website, the President’s Volunteer Service Award encourages citizens to live a life of service through presidential gratitude and national recognition.
The award recognizes individuals who have reached a certain number of hours of volunteer service over a 12-month period or cumulative hours over the course of a lifetime.
In total, Hope completed more than 50 hours of volunteer service for which she was awarded the bronze medal. She has spent time volunteering at a soup kitchen in Asbury Park and helping younger students in her temple’s youth group and Hebrew school.
