He didn’t win a trophy himself, but he took home top honors for designing one.
Landstown High School senior Matthew Gump won first place in the Association for Career and Technical Education’s (ACTE) national Student Trophy Design Contest. ACTE honors the work of teachers and administrators who work in the field of Career and Technical Education (CTE). To honor the national ACTE Teachers of the Year, the ACTE Board of Directors put together a competition where students could submit designs of what the Teacher of the Year trophy should look like.
In other words, it was a competition to design the best trophy.
Gump’s design beat out the other 75 submissions that came in from across the country. For winning, Gump was also awarded a $1,000 scholarship. However, for Gump, who attends the Technology Academy & Governor’s STEM Academy at Landstown, one of the biggest successes has been finding a new passion for his study.
“3D modeling and computer-aided design (CAD) have given me a form of expression I could have never imagined… an opportunity to express myself and actually see those forms of expression become reality,” Gump wrote in his entry application. “It has given me new interests and goals in the fields of architecture and rendering…Though manufacturing and computer designs
of desks and park bathrooms may seem unusual and not particularly artsy, I believe it is simply another thing of beauty, one seen every single day of our lives.”
To learn more about Gump’s award, see the school division’s press release.