The Fairchild Challenge is our award winning, interdisciplinary, environmental science competition designed to engage students of diverse interests, abilities, talents and backgrounds to explore the natural world. The program has been recognized as a benchmark for exceptional STEM education and for empowering PreK–12th grade students to become the next generation of scientists, researchers, educated voters, policy makers, and environmentally-minded citizens.

The Fairchild Challenge takes place over the course of the academic year and offers an annual menu of activities (called Challenges) for individual students and groups. Schools can participate in any number of the annual Challenges. Best entries selected by the schools and submitted to Fairchild are evaluated by panels of independent judges and awarded points based on the judges’ scores. Mindful of teachers’ workloads, The Fairchild Challenge dovetails with public school curricula and is aligned with the state and national academic standards. Fairchild is committed to making this program accessible to all interested students in the region, regardless of their schools’ resources. The Fairchild Challenge encourages school participation with incentives such as grants for school gardens, transportation subsidies, seeds or plants, specialized workshops, professional development, and additional resources. Schools requiring additional assistance can contact The Fairchild Challenge staff for assistance or request a visit to your school to explain the program in detail.

Your goal is to collaborate, explore, and have FUN while earning points for your school to receive The 2024–2025 Fairchild Challenge Award. Our Awards Ceremony will take place on Saturday, May 17 at Fairchild. Schools receiving The Fairchild Challenge Award for five or ten consecutive years become a Fairchild Challenge School of Excellence and receive a banner to hang proudly at their school. Additionally, the top-scoring schools will be awarded cash prizes of up to $1,500 to support environmental programs at their school.

Our goal is to offer students a clear educational pathway that encourages environmental stewardship, develops leadership in environmental science and diversifies the scientific workforce.

Each participating teacher should fill out the annual Teacher Registration Form. We encourage teachers to collaborate with colleagues from other disciplines and to make sure an administrator signs off on your participation. Please, notify all administrators and faculty that your school is registered. Any student or teacher at a school is eligible to participate.

Fairchild Challenge staff is available to visit schools to introduce the program at faculty meetings or student assemblies. Contact us at challenge@fairchildgarden.org, to request a school consultation.

Following the stated policies and requirements outlined on each Challenge description page, teachers submit the best entries from their schools with completed entry forms. Entries may be submitted either in person to Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden or via certified mail. In order for Challenge entries to be marked as complete, teachers must complete an Entry Form for each Challenge they participate in.

• Electronic submissions should be uploaded to the corresponding Challenge Entry Form, unless otherwise stated in the Challenge description.

• To submit an entry at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden, please drop off your entry during business hours, between 9:30 am and 5:00 pm, at the Visitor’s Center. Weekends are only possible with advance notice. It is very helpful if you contact The Fairchild Challenge staff to make us aware of your submission. You will receive an email noting that staff received your entry.

Though each particular Challenge has different entry submission requirements, the 2024–2025 Fairchild Challenge registration, entry forms and some tables are electronic. Please, be advised that it is good practice to save or print a copy for your records. To save completed forms on your Internet browser: right click your mouse, select print, either send the information to your printer or choose save as PDF. You should receive an immediate response when your submission has been received.

Certain forms can also be mailed, faxed or delivered to:

FAIRCHILD CHALLENGE
FAIRCHILD TROPICAL BOTANIC GARDEN
10901 Old Cutler Road,
Coral Gables, FL 33156-4296
Fax 305.400.0265

In order to make the program available to all schools, the number of submissions that we can receive from each school is limited; therefore, we cannot accept additional submissions unless otherwise stated on a specific Challenge page. We encourage schools to host school events to help teachers and students determine the top submissions to send to Fairchild for judging.

Each student entry is judged by a panel of experts at Fairchild according to predetermined evaluation criteria. The evaluation criteria are available for each Challenge and are located on each Challenge page. Scores, including prizes awarded to individual students and groups that participate in the program, are emailed to all teachers on each school’s contact list. You will only receive your school’s scores; we do not disclose other schools’ scores or standing in the competition. Additionally, teachers will be notified via email of any awards earned by your school. Final results will be announced, and prizes will be awarded at the awards ceremonies in May.

We will provide schools with their scores, but the completed evaluation sheets are not released after the judging panels.

Schools are sent their individual scores throughout the year, but the competition standings are not released until the awards ceremonies in May.

All schools that earn the designated point totals for each year will be presented with The Fairchild Challenge Award at the awards ceremony in May. Schools receiving The Fairchild Challenge Award for five or ten years will be honored as a Fairchild Challenge School of Excellence and will receive a banner.

The Fairchild Challenge is designed to increase student’s environmental awareness, scholarship and stewardship. In order to encourage students to visit the garden with their family, all actively-participating students receive a four-person pass to Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden. Top-scoring schools receive monetary awards of up to $1,500 to be used towards their environmental programs.

The Fairchild Challenge staff maintains regular e-mail contact with participating teachers through monthly e-newsletters. For this reason, we ask all of our teachers to keep us informed of any e-mail address changes. This is especially important if you are taking a lead role in organizing your school’s Fairchild Challenge activities. Our monthly e-newsletter provides reminders and updates for deadlines, grant applications, workshops and other Fairchild Challenge related information.

Fairchild can assist with reimbursing transportation costs for Title 1 schools for Fairchild Challenge events. Contact us at challenge@fairchildgarden.org for further details.