Environmental Competition

Rachel Walla
As many of you may have heard several Montana Tech Students recently took home many of the top honors from the Pacific Northwest International Conference at the University of Montana. The conference took place in early November and was held by the Air & Waste Management Association. The purpose of this conference is to share information and network among both experienced professionals and college students in the environmental field. The conference brings together a mix of professional presentations, exhibitors and is the setting for the student Environmental Challenge.

This year Montana Tech’s Environmental Engineering students excelled in the competition and brought home several first place titles, proving the quality of their education and the ability to relate it to field work. Jennifer Black, a graduate student in Environmental Engineering earned first place in the Student Presentation Competition. Her presentation titled, “Furbearing Wildlife as Biosamplers: Beaver, Mink, and Muskrat in the Vicinity of the Anaconda Smelter National Priority List” focused on the effects of toxins on area animals. Two Montana Tech Students, Casey Clark and George Mwaniki also tied for second place in the presentation competition.
There was also an Environmental Challenge Competition in which teams of students are given a “true-to-life” environmental problem to solve. In this competition there is more than $4,000 in prize money up for grabs as well as an all-expense paid trip to Orlando for the national competition. Tech students Hattie Torgerson (senior), Gina Barry(sophomore), and Laura Jenkins (sophomore) beat out other teams of upperclassmen and graduate students to gain the top award and will be competing nationally later in the year. The third place was also garnered by Montana Tech Students Ouisha Toenyes (senior), Adrianna Lundberg (freshman), Sally Bleck (freshman), and Chris Atherly (freshman).
Students who attended the conference were in agreement that it was a good networking opportunity. There were many opportunities to post resumes and meet influential people with similar interests. Most said it was an excellent change to receive career advice and learn more about the options available. All-in-all these students were very successful at the conference and through their own hard work they have gained a lot of notice. They represented Montana Tech with professionalism and used real-life solutions to real problems. It says a lot about the Environmental Engineering department to have such successful students and even more about the students themselves.