Five submissions from Nikola Tesla STEM High School students took the top five prizes at the Esri ArcGIS Online Washington State Competition. Daniel Rashevsky, junior, won the top prize with his map story on homelessness. His project was submitted to the national competition. Winners were announced in late May.  

According to the event website, this online mapping competition is a great opportunity to engage students in researching a topic of interest. Students then use Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and present an interesting story to a worldwide audience. No coding is required as students create configurable applications using their own content. 

The competition is open to high school (grades 9-12) and middle school (grades 4-8) students in Washington state and other participating states throughout the country. This is the first year Washington state is participating.

Below are the names of the students, the name of the project and a link to their project:

• The State of Seattle's Homeless Population, Daniel Rashevsky
• The Tacoma Smelter, Francessca Rossi
• Salmon: The Indicators of the Environment, William Erignac and Theo Devant
• Pacific County Shellfish, Rishika Veeramachaneni and Minu Padhye
• Yakama Tribe, Tichada Tantasirikorn and Qing Hui Xie