Students win national environmental award

Students from Western Washington University's Huxley College of the Environment recently won a national award at the Air and Waste Management Association's Annual Conference and Exhibition in Portland, Ore.

WWU students Mackenzie Dolstad, Melody Feden, Jason Boyd and Eleanor Hines accept their check of $6,000 as winners of this year's Environmental Challenge International competition.

WWU students Mackenzie Dolstad, Melody Feden, Jason Boyd and Eleanor Hines won the Environmental Challenge International. The ECi is a student-team competition that requires the students to prepare and present a solution to a "real world" environmental problem.

This year, the ECi problem the team faced was deciding if the installation of a clean coal plant in the Pacific Northwest would be a step forward for the area and the environment. If the teams disagreed with the installation of the coal plant, they had to come up with other ways to equal the energy of the plant. The teams had to submit a proposal, poster and give a final presentation. A prize of $6,000 was awarded to the Western team to be split up among the four members.

"The ECi provided an excellent means to prepare the students involved for situations that will undoubtedly occur once we leave the academic arena," Dolstad said. "We needed to work as a team, and use the skills that each of us brought to the table to accommodate the various aspects of the problem."

The AWMA's Annual Conference and Exhibition offers students the opportunity to present and discuss their research, network with environmental professionals, participate in the ECi, and take part in social festivities and tours. More than 150 students from throughout the world attended the conference this year.

For more information, contact Ruth Sofield at (360) 650-2181 or ruth.harper@wwu.edu or the AWMA Web site at http://www.awma.org/ACE2008/.