East Austin Educator Sanford Jeames Earns First 'Rather Prize'

EAST AUSTIN, TX -- Eastside Memorial High School educator Sanford Jeames has been awarded the inaugural Rather Prize, which carries a $10,000 honorarium.

The newly launched award is meant to honor a Texas student, teacher or administrator with the best idea on improving Texas education. Jeames, coordinator of the health science program at Eastside Memorial, secured the honor from a field of many other qualified candidates, reports KVUE-TV.

"What we try to do is provide our students with an opportunity to do more than just go to class," he told the news station. "Students in our program can leave with five professional certifications."

The prize is named after iconic broadcaster Dan Rather, and was co-created by Rice University student Martin Rather and his journalist grandfather. It was bestowed to Jeames on Monday during the SXSWedu event staged in the downtown Austin Convention Center.

Fellow educators and students had been voting to determine the winner of the Rather Prize in the last several months. In the end, Jeames’ idea, dubbed “STEP Up Challenge,” came out on top.

The acronym stands for Student Training and Enrichment Project, and centers on mentoring leadership to achieve pathways into higher education.

"We think our idea with the Rather Prize is something that impacts our students right now," Jeames told KVUE. "A community learning environment is not just a classroom, it's really having the students know that there's a partnership beyond that."

Junior Haley Del Rio certainly thinks so. The student likes the idea of bringing in more mentors and community leaders to whom she and her classmates can relate and emulate..

"I think that's what the Rather Prize will do,” Del Rio said. “We'll get to see college life and talk to real college students. And a lot of times I don't see a lot of minorities, that will definitely help me, to see minorities in big places because that's where I'm going."