Second-year Engineering students Elizabeth Engel, Matthew Jungclaus and Quinn Weber were awarded first place in last Thursday's Sustainability Project Competition for their housing energy education project, edging out 17 other proposals.
The competition, which was sponsored by the Presidential Committee on Sustainability and intended to open avenues of funding to students, awarded $750 apiece to the top three student-led sustainability projects, said Andrew Greene, sustainability planner at the Office of the Architect.
The winning students are members of an ecoMOD design group, an initiative through the Engineering School to design affordable, sustainable housing, Jungclaus said.
The project - for which the students will receive $750 and a Jefferson Public Citizens grant - proposed combining data collected from past ecoMOD homes and local energy audits and information to generate an educational model of home energy efficiency, Greene said.
"You'll find a lot of similar issues in other homes, like heating inefficiencies or leaks. They're trying to extrapolate some common problems and communicate that to homeowners," Greene said.\nThe data collected by the team will be analyzed and their findings distributed for educational purposes. The project aims to grab the attention of every demographic, including children, Jungclaus added.
The competition is not the only forum through which the University can showcase student efforts at sustainability, Greene said, as there are other initiatives seeking the same goal exist at the University. For example, Student Council's Environmental Sustainability Committee recently approved the Green Initiative Funding Tomorrow which also seeks to reward students working on sustainability projects.
"There's an affinity between the way we showcase these projects and GIFT. There will still be a role for our competition, but the funding elements and the support will formalize and grow in the GIFT initiative," Greene said.
Engel, Jungclaus and Weber will continue their housing energy education project during the summer.
"We think it will be a big step in moving toward sustainability," Engel said.
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