Student receives $40,000 scholarship from Amazon

A Gwinnett School of Mathematics, Science and Technology student is getting a lot of money from online giant Amazon to pursue a college education.

Sierra Frisbee received a $40,000 scholarship from Amazon — as well as a guaranteed internship after her freshman year of college — so she can pursue an undergraduate degree in computer science. She is one of 100 Amazon Future Engineer scholarship recipients who will receive money intended to cover four years of their college education.

And, in true Amazon fashion, Frisbee received the news when her scholarship certificate was delivered to the school by Amazon’s fully-electric delivery system, Scout, delivered it in a package that it brought to her school.

“Sierra has been a wonderful student to watch grow; she is enthusiastic, inquisitive, independent, and intelligent, but what stands out most of all is her unbridled passion to engineer ways to always be helping others. It is this passion that will help her change the world for the better,” Frisbee’s teacher, Laura Gray, wrote in her letter nominating the student for the scholarship.

Scholarship recipients are chosen based on their academic achievement, leadership, school and community activity involvement, work experience, financial need and future goals.

Frisbee is no stranger to being recognized.

A computer science and robotics student, was named GSMST’s Career and Technical Education Student of the Year and was a finalist for Gwinnett County Public Schools’ CTE Student of the Year. She has also earned first-place honors in the robotics and intelligent machines category at the ISEF Regional Science and Engineering Fair, both mentored and led a Future Lego League Robotics team that won a Regional and State Championship. Her FTC teams have been led by her to several championships during her four years at GSMST as well.

Frisbee also completed a Job Shadow Experience through Women in Technology Girls at IBM and the Weather Company in the summer of 2018. As part of the program, she used the Watson computer to wrote artificial intelligence programs. She built and coded an LED piano embedded systems project as part of the MIT Online Science, Technology, and Engineering Community Symposium as well, and spent three summers serving as an intern in Georgia Tech’s Research Institute Aerospace, Transportation, and Advanced Systems Laboratory.

And, oh yeah, Frisbee will be attending a college with a prestigious academic reputation in the fall. You might have heard of it — it’s called Harvard University.