Welcome Letter

The application deadline for 2011-2012 ESA Foundation scholarship and grant opportunities is fast approaching. We’ll be accepting applications until May 15 and will introduce our new scholarship and grant recipients this fall.

Our current grant and scholarship recipients continue to do amazing work and we’re excited to share their stories with you. But first, we want to tell you about some recent recognitions:

• 2010 grant recipient DonorsChoose.org was named one of Fast Company’s “50 Most Innovative Companies” for 2011
• Dr. Idit Harel Caperton from World Wide Workshop Foundation, a 2011 grant recipient, won the 2010 Jessie McCanse Award for Individual Contribution to Media Literacy
• HopeLab celebrated its 10th birthday in February. The ESA Foundation has proudly supported the distribution of Re-Mission, a video game developed by HopeLab for teens and young adults with cancer since 2007.

In this edition of the newsletter we’ve highlighted a new competition from 2011 grant recipient Case Western Reserve University that challenges high school students to create games focused on wind energy. We also talked with scholarship recipient Charles Lee about the appeal of a career in game development.

As always, thanks for your support!

Jenny Lai
Vice President, ESA Foundation

A New Challenge

In its first ever Great Lakes Game Project Challenge, Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) is calling on high school students to create fun, engaging and educational computer games that promote the use of wind energy.  Teams of four to seven high school students who live in states bordering Lake Erie are eligible to submit their games for the opportunity to win recognition and achievement awards, while learning more about game development – and having fun.

Marc Buchner, an associate professor in CWRU’s Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department, said the school modeled the competition off of a course where students spent a
semester working together on a game. Students were enthusiastic about the opportunity to work closely with their peers and express themselves through the game development experience.

“We wanted to put together a challenge that excited all students – not just those studying computer science, but also the students interested in other fields that are so important in gaming development such as art and music,” said Buchner. “This is really a cross-discipline experience and we hope it inspires more students to get involved in STEM areas.”
The competition was launched in partnership between the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department, the Great Lakes Institute for Energy Innovation and the ESA Foundation. Registration is currently open until the end of August.

On August 9-12, teachers, coaches and mentors will also have the opportunity to participate in a workshop so they can learn more about designing, creating and managing the team development of computer games. The final tournament will take place in Cleveland, Ohio, on December 17, 2011.

For more information about the Great Lakes Game Project Challenge, go to http://engineering.case.edu/eecs/challenge.

To learn more about ESA Foundation grant opportunities, visit http://www.theesa.com/foundation/application.asp.  

Creating a Compelling Product

Computer programming is “simply logic” for two-time ESA Foundation Scholarship Recipient Charles Lee.

“Game development is really just an extension of my computer programming skills. Ultimately, I want to create a compelling end product and that’s what games are – they translate across so many groups of people,” said Lee.

Lee emigrated from China in 1997. He sees his background as playing a significant role in his ability to offer a different perspective in the industry.

“Creating games is completely a team effort because not only do people offer different skills, whether it’s programming or artistic design, they also offer different perspectives on which aspects of the game would appeal to different groups,” Lee added.

Lee is a junior at the DigiPen Institute of Technology pursuing a degree in Real-Time Interactive Simulation. Ultimately, he hopes to land a job as a gameplay programmer writing game logic.

To learn more about the ESA Foundation scholarship program, visit http://www.theesa.com/foundation/scholarship.asp.