The Women in Games Scholarship was created to encourage and assist female game designers and help push their opportunities forward in the game industry. The one-year game design program being offered at Vancouver Film School has been featured as one of the top 10 schools favored by industry recruiters in the L.A. Times. This year-long program covers many facets of game design including game theory, level design, game interface design, story-telling, and more. The winner of this prestigious scholarship is a woman by the name of Anne Dickerson who started her road down creating educational games as a 4th grade teacher in Washington D.C. using video games to re-ignite the passion for learning in her city students and help make the experience enjoyable for them while sneaking some good old learning into their heads at the same time.

“I am beyond thrilled to receive this great honor,” says Anne. “As an elementary school teacher, I realized the significant impact games can have on student achievement, and since leaving the classroom, I have aspired to create effective educational games. I am confident that this award, along with the excellent education I will obtain through the VFS Game Design program, will bring me one step closer to achieving my goal of effecting systemic change in the field of education through games.”

In addition to the full scholarship Anne has been awarded, the Women in Games Scholarship, VFS also awarded three other scholarships, thanks to the contributions of a number of Game Design Expo 2010 sponsors. Congratulations to the following scholarship winners: Aubrey Tennant from Ontario, Canada – $7,000 G4TechTV scholarship, Jie (Jacky) He from British Columbia, Canada – $5,000 Annex Pro scholarship, and Brooke Fargo from British Columbia, Canada – $2,500 Radical Entertainment scholarship.