The Jim Koerschen Award for Innovation in Schools was created by the ACAMIS Board of Directors in honour of Dr. Jim Koerschen. Dr. Koerschen was a former university President and an esteemed international educator during his five years as Head of School at Concordia International School Shanghai. He served on the ACAMIS Board for three years and in 2013, was appointed and served as the first Executive Director of ACAMIS until he passed away in 2014.
Dr. Koerschen became known within ACAMIS as an innovative educator and outside-the-box thinker. It is with this in mind that the Award for Innovation in International Schools was created. Participation in the Award is open to students enrolled in all ACAMIS full membership schools in China and Mongolia.
Submissions are closed
Criteria
The Koerschen Award is meant to provide a means of encouraging or stimulating innovation within schools as participants:
- Apply academic, social, and personal skills to create an innovative program, system, activity, or service for their school community;
- Work within groups to apply creativity to achieve authentic outcomes;
- Gain a deeper understanding of themselves, their community, and their school;
- Demonstrate leadership while guiding a team to solve problems and work collaboratively while helping others.
Award
Up to $2,500 USD may be awarded to the successful applicant team as determined by the ACAMIS Selection Committee named by the ACAMIS Board.
Who Should Apply?
The Koerschen Award is open to students who are enrolled in ACAMIS member schools in the full membership category and are supported by the Head of School and a faculty representative who provides guidance to the group carrying out the innovation.
Application Process
Schools that are planning to apply for a Koerschen Award Grant should first register their intent by completing the Preliminary Notice Form. When the students are ready to make full Application, they can click here to download the application form. The proposal should be no more than 750 words.
For this award, there may be multiple applicants within one school, in which case, the school should select the best entry and submit only one application per school.
All sections of Koerschen Award Application Form need to be completed and may include supplementary and supporting information.
When completing the Innovation Award Proposal, the applicant(s) should consider the following questions:
- What kind of innovation is being planned?
- Why is the innovation meaningful to the school?
- Why is this project important to the innovators?
- What outcomes has the innovation provided fellow students and/or the schools?
- How can success of the innovation be measured or described?
Application Deadline
The completed ACAMIS Koerschen Award for Innovation Application Form must be sent to operations@acamis.org no later than Friday, February 20, 2026. Late applications will not be accepted.
Recipients in Previous Years
Renaissance College
Innovative AI Learning Design Club
The Innovative AI Learning Design Club empowers students to become empathetic creators and tech‑forward leaders by designing AI‑enhanced educational games that address real‑world learning challenges. The plan involves developing three interactive game projects per year across subjects such as language, culture, STEM, and global issues. Student members are responsible for identifying authentic learning needs, designing and testing games using beginner‑friendly AI tools, and delivering workshops to empower peers—both within our school and at partner schools—to become designers themselves. Our ultimate goal is to make learning more engaging and effective, bridge the digital divide through open educational resources, and cultivate a culture of innovation, empathy, and service that multiplies impact through shared leadership and peer‑to‑peer empowerment. Organized into collaborative, student‑led teams, members apply academic, social, and personal skills to build interactive quizzes, simulations, and narrative‑based multimodal games. By designing for diverse learners—including peers from partner schools and underrepresented groups—students directly address authentic educational gaps such as language access and STEM engagement, while developing critical AI literacy, computational thinking, and design thinking skills. Our innovation lies in merging AI education, student agency, and social impact within a sustainable peer‑led framework. We actively bridge the digital divide by creating and openly sharing free, adaptable learning tools. Guided by a supervisor—an EdD candidate in UIUC’s Learning Design and Leadership program—the club translates cutting‑edge research on AI literacy into impactful, student‑centered practice.
Yew Chung International School Shanghai Pudong
Bloodline.Youth
Bloodline is one of the largest blood collection agencies in East China region, it works under the aegis of the Shanghai Blood Center. I was inspired to volunteer with Bloodline and Shanghai Blood Center (SBC) because of a personal story from when my grandfather was undergoing medical treatment – I learned that even though blood donation is free, there is a shortage of blood available for medical emergencies. I have served as a medical volunteer since 2023, and in 2024, I approached Bloodline & SBC with an idea to reach beyond regular blood donors and empower the expatriate community to donate blood. While children are not allowed to donate blood, blood donation in the adult community at various international schools was evidently lacking, so my idea was to tap into this underutilized resource. I took this innovation ahead by organizing the first Blood Donation Drive at YCIS’s Pudong Campus. The drive was a huge success with more than 30 donors donating more than 50 units of blood and plasma for children undergoing cancer treatment in East China. Bloodline & SBC supported the idea and allowed me to take up the role of co-founder of Bloodline.Y. This is a student-led initiative that currently runs blood donation drives across various schools around Shanghai. At Bloodline.Y, we connect students to a network that spans across various schools, many of them ACAMIS members, and train them as volunteers. The volunteer training focuses on donation awareness, increasing visibility and opportunities for donations. We also aim to educate the public about facts and benefits, as well as incorrect assumptions and beliefs about blood donation. This interschool approach, combined with the support of Dr. Maskay (Bloodline) and Mr. Zhu (SBC) and various families, makes Bloodline.Y a unique and innovative grassroots initiative that meets an urgent societal need while providing opportunity for authentic education and community activism.
Dalian Amerian International School
Sea Dragon Service Ambassador Leadship Team
The Sea Dragon Service Ambassadors (SDSA) proposes to coordinate service-based projects for school-wide participation and through raising awareness, fundraising and the performance of service. The plan involves developing four service projects per year which can involve the entire school. The SDSAs would be responsible for identifying communities in need, planning the service project and leading the school toward completing the project. Our ultimate goal is to raise awareness for the vulnerable part of the world and create a service mentality within our student bodies.
Shanghai Soong Ching Ling School International Division
Diverse Dialogue Workshop
The Diverse Dialogue (DD) Workshop aims to provide SCLS students with meaningful opportunities to learn about the disabled community through direct interaction and education on individual differences. Individuals with disabilities will be invited to campus to engage with students through a combination of speeches, interactive activities, and Q&A sessions. By communicating with them, listening to their experiences, and understanding how they navigate life differently, students will develop greater empathy and awareness. This project fosters inclusivity and kindness, preparing students to become global citizens who will carry these values of equality and the belief that disability means mismatched human interaction, into the wider world.
Hangzhou International School
Bryophyte Oasis @ HIS
HIS’ collaborative and unique environmental program, designed by eleven students, focused on monitoring and improving indoor air quality using terrariums. In their project, students used sensors to monitor IAQ, humidity and temperature. Robotics is a central component of this award-winning program as a means of automatic watering.
International School of Tianjin
The Literacy Lab Workshop @ IST
The Literacy Lab, established at IST, is student agency at its finest. This voluntary student-led program utilizes trained student mentors’ inquiry/questioning skills to help other students work through academic problems.
Beijing City International School
Development of Sustainable Urban Farms @ BCIS
Our sustainable urban farm is an innovative solution that will revolutionize the way we think about urban farming. The main hydroponic system will be set up in the school reception area with additional systems displayed in other public areas. This will make the upgrade the environment in the school and provide educational value to inform the community about food security and a more sustainable future.
Beijing City International School
Circularity Projects @ BCIS
We are exploring Circularity Projects in Aquaponics, Hydroponics, Carbon Capture and Spent Coffee Ground Products. The projects are based around the Design Thinking process developed by the Interaction Design Foundation. Our Garden Club will experiment with hydroponics to grow vegetables without soil and measure the results; with aquaponics the aim is to find a self-sustaining method to grow fruits and vegetables with a minimized system that embodies a nitrogen cycle cultures fish and vegetables side by side where the waste from fish is constantly reused; the Carbon Capture unit explores ways to build a small carbon capturing device for possible household use in automatically fertilizing household plants; the coffee ground portion is to create ways to recycle coffee grounds, 75% of which currently ends up wasted in landfills when it has many other productive uses that we will explore.