WWU students win first place in regional Environmental Challenge competition

December 6, 2024

Five smiling individuals, three men and two women, stand together. Two hold an award. They wear conference badges. The setting appears to be a hallway.

Emma Fehr, Grace Landaverde, Cody Wong, Gabriel Sheck, and Ian Moran at the PNWIS conference in Eugene, Oregon, in November. Cody, center, holds the trophy that the team won for their first place win in the Environmental Challenge.

Environmental Sciences students Emma Fehr, Grace Landaverde, Cody Wong, and Gabriel Sheck brought home a first-place trophy for their proposal and presentation to clean up a hypothetical spill at an industrial site at the regional Air and Waste Management Association (A&WMA) Environmental Challenge student competition in Eugene, Oregon in November.

The Environmental Challenge is an opportunity for students to apply their knowledge about environmental toxicology, chemistry, and policy, interfacing with industry consultants and state regulators. The winning solution requires students to address the ecological, economic, and social impacts. The WWU team beat out seven other teams from universities as far away as Idaho and Montana.

The team brought home a beautiful trophy and a cash prize, and they’ve been invited to compete in the 2025 Environmental Challenge International (ECi) Competition at the A&WMA’s annual conference!

Learn more info about the Pacific Northwest International Section (PNWIS) of the Air & Waste Management Association’s Environmental Challenge, including a link to the challenge problem, at https://pnwis.org/students/environmental-challenge/.