Teachers Want More Professional Development — and Samsung Solve for Tomorrow Delivers

America’s teachers are hungry for more — and better — professional development opportunities. It’s a consistent message Samsung Electronics America has heard over the 15 years of running Samsung Solve for Tomorrow, the nationwide STEM competition that empowers educators to help public middle and high school students create real-world solutions for community issues — and prove that STEM is about more than equations, coding, and lab experiments. It’s about creativity, critical thinking, and making a lasting difference.

Our latest survey, The State of STEM Education, confirms it: an overwhelming 97% of teachers said they would like additional support or resources to help them bring emerging tech and educational concepts into their STEM teaching. Specifically, they rank access to professional development and training as an urgent need on a par with updated curriculum resources, and alongside priorities like improved technology and collaboration with industry professionals.

Responding to this call for educator support, Samsung created Samsung Solve for Tomorrow Teacher Academy seven years ago. Since then, we’ve been expanding and evolving the program, introducing new subject areas and offering flexible, virtual  learning experiences to make educator professional development even more accessible. This year’s seventh annual Teacher Academy expanded further, offering nearly 200 teachers three separate virtual workshops focused on critical areas shaping the future of STEM education: Artificial Intelligence (AI), Design Thinking, and Entrepreneurship.

The interactive virtual sessions wove subject-expert presentations together with engaging breakout discussions, giving educators the opportunity to connect, share ideas, and exchange teaching experiences. Led by experts in their respective fields — AI with longtime Teacher Academy partner MindSpark Learning, Entrepreneurship with BUILD.org, and Design Thinking with Samsung Education Solutions coaches — participants worked together to develop and present plans and solutions in response to challenges posed by the session facilitators. This approach was designed to mirror the collaborative, real-world problem-solving educators foster in their own classrooms.

At a time when America’s education sector is facing uncertainty and increased pressure on resources, the feedback we received from teachers validates Samsung’s continued investment in their professional development:

• “You are providing a service that is not otherwise available to small rural school districts struggling with budgetary constraints. It is very much appreciated.”
• “I anticipate the sessions benefitting me in the classroom a couple of different ways: 1) using the knowledge gained from the session to be cognizant of the potential to take an engineering design project to an actual product fit for patent or even marketing; 2) embracing artificial intelligence so that students will see it as a resource to help them develop more thorough prompts and to know it’s not a secret tool you shouldn’t let teachers know you are using.”
• “The information presented in the sessions will enable us to create more thorough design proposals and will allow us to use AI tools to help us throughout the project development life cycle.”

Samsung’s Teacher Academy workshops — both in-person and virtual — have long focused on training teachers to leverage Problem-Based Learning (PBL), an educational approach that emphasizes problem identification and solution-finding. Applying STEM learning to real-world issues demonstrates STEM’s value both inside and outside the classroom. As PBL has become more widely embraced by educators, so too has the need to understand other key elements of a creative, solutions-focused approach to STEM. That’s why the Solve for Tomorrow team centered this season’s Teacher Academy around timely topics—AI, Entrepreneurship, and Design Thinking—to help today’s teachers equip Gen Z and Gen Alpha students with the skills needed to thrive in a rapidly evolving world.

AI: Preparing Students for a Tech-Driven Tomorrow

Nearly all teachers (96%) believe AI will become an intrinsic part of education within the next decade, yet 97% say they lack the necessary resources to integrate emerging technologies like AI into their curricula. The AI Uncovered workshop, led by Mindspark Learning, explored how AI tools can enhance teaching while addressing concerns such as ethics, cheating, and responsible use. Educators learned practical ways to use AI in classrooms and discussed how to ensure students learn responsible AI practices that promote ethical decision-making and digital literacy.

Entrepreneurship: Inspiring the Next Generation of Innovators & Creators

Although 99% of teachers agree that entrepreneurship fosters creativity, teamwork, and business ethics, only 20% of middle and high schools offer entrepreneurship classes. To tackle this gap, the How to Turn a Team into a Brand workshop, led by BUILD.org, equipped educators with tools to inspire entrepreneurial thinking. Teachers learned key marketing principles—People, Product, Place, Price, Promotion—to help students develop ideas that are both innovative and marketable, ensuring sustainability in their projects long after the competition.

Design Thinking: Fostering Inclusivity & Empathy in Problem-Solving

Design Thinking encourages structured problem-solving and has been embraced by industries from product design to business consulting. The Design Thinking for Real World Problem Solving workshop, facilitated by the Samsung Education Solutions team, introduced educators to the Solve in Time!® game. This interactive experience guided participants through the five-step process—Problem, Research, Understand, Solve, Share—helping them apply inclusive, human-centered solutions to real-world issues. The workshop underscored how design thinking is essential for fostering critical problem-solving skills in the classroom.

To date, more than 700 teachers have participated in the Solve for Tomorrow Teacher Academy program. Combined with Samsung’s commitment of over $29 million in technology and classroom resources to nearly 4,300 public schools across the U.S., this work underscores how Samsung is helping to close both the knowledge and resource gaps in STEM education. Stay tuned for more Teacher Academy sessions launching this summer and throughout the next school year. Due to teacher demand, we’re reintroducing an in-person component—on July 22, we’ll host a full day of professional development workshops at our Washington, D.C. office with Samsung Education coaches. We’ll also continue exploring timely themes like AI and design thinking in future Teacher Academy sessions.

To learn more about Samsung Solve for Tomorrow, please visit www.samsung.com/solve and follow us on Instagram and Facebook. Applications for the 2025–2026 national STEM competition will open in August 2025, and all participating teachers are invited to join Solve for Tomorrow Teacher Academy program to upskill and continue their learning journey.