Kansas high school students are national environmental science leaders
Eight high school students from Derby won a national competition with their creation of Project DIG, a three-pronged approach to reducing their school’s carbon footprint. They won first place in the 2021 National STEM Innovation Challenge, sponsored by the Center for Energy Workforce Development.
The Center for Energy Workforce Development is a national non-profit made up of energy companies, contractors, associations, unions, and educators to create a skilled and diverse future workforce for the energy industry.
The students won $1,000, which they plan to use to implement their plan at Derby High School, if permitted by the district school board.
The first prong of Project DIG is to decrease waste. They plan to implement a strong recycling program and cut back on non-reusable resources, like Styrofoam lunch trays, according to Bryce Schreiber, one of the students.
“We wanted to come up with a plan that was easy because if we went to the school board and asked them to change our entire air conditioning system, that wouldn’t be an easy fix,” Schreiber said. “So we wanted to come up with a plan that we could easily implement at our school and could be implemented at other schools at a low cost.”
Samuel Griffitt was involved in the team to increase efficiency, which looked at ways the school could reduce energy consumption and costs. Evergy representatives and engineers told the students how to determine energy usage, cost and carbon outputs.
“We had individuals from Evergy come talk to them about renewable programs, what it meant to have wind turbines, solar, and the energy efficiency that could be achieved with the school on different avenues,” said Sherii Farmer, Evergy community relations manager.
In the end, the students decided to look at their school’s electric lights.
“By reducing the lighting that we use in the more open spaces, like our cafeteria, by just 15% we could save $33,000 a year,” Griffitt said.
The last prong of the project is for the students to grow a garden, utilizing the school’s greenhouse.
“By producing our own food here at the school, that reduces the need for outside sources to bring food in, which decreases carbon emissions,” said Bryleigh Cross. “The garden also acts as a source of carbon sequestration, or filtering carbon out of the atmosphere.”
The Derby High School students were led by Ms. Brianna Bosley, a science teacher, and a more detailed explanation of their project can be found on Youtube by searching “Derby High School (KS) STEM Innovation Challenge 2021.”
The team members are: Aneesa Abdul-Hameed, Camdan Cooper, Bryleigh Cross, Kley Davis, Samuel Griffitt, Magnus Moeder, Jaidyn Schomp, and Bryce Schreiber.
