In April of 2004, a team of our chemical engineering students won the USDA Award of Excellence at the 14th Annual Environmental Design Contest at New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, N.M. Almost 300 students comprising 40 teams from the U.S., Mexico and Canada competed in five different tasks at the contest.

The student designed solutions for real-world environmental problems. All teams prepared four different presentations: written, oral, poster and a bench-scale model. The presentations were judged by a team of environmental professionals.

The UA team and Roy Penney, advisor, competed in the task titled "Reduction of Fecal Bacterial Load in Produce Packing-House Wash Water." The USDA Award recognized team interaction, team building and team problem-solving. It came with an award of $1,250. The students were Colin Andreas, Carey Dougan, David Jackson, Gregory Mitchell, Nikki Morara, Sarah Stanley and Jack Williamson.

Getting to the competition was half the challenge. Two students, David Jackson and Morgan Correll, drove a pickup truck carrying the 10 foot long demonstration tomato washer 1000 miles for the competition.

A second team of chemical engineering students competed in the task titled "Carbon Sequestration" which required the economic removal and permanent storage of the green house gas carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The students were Morgan Correll, Joseph Kotarek, Justin Lovelady, Sarah Matthews, Grant Parker, and Russ Sword.

Penney was proud of the performance of both groups stating "our teams had the best engineering design solutions to the tasks in the competition."

The week-long competition was sponsored by WERC: A Consortium for Environmental Education and Technology Development. The WERC consortium combines the expertise from New Mexico’s higher education institutions and national laboratories.