Wednesday, March 11, 2020

PennDOT Announces District 6 & 12 Winners Of Student Innovations Litter Challenge From Montgomery, Westmoreland Counties

The Department of Transportation announced a team of students from the PA Virtual Charter School, headquartered in King of Prussia, Montgomery County has been selected as the PennDOT District 6 winner for its third Innovations Challenge.
Team members include Layla Koon, Alysandra Chen, and Logan Seaver.
The winning regional team’s innovative idea is to initiate a statewide litter competition, which they refer to as The SLC Program. The program will work in conjunction with such programs as PennDOT’s Adopt-A-Highway to incentivize teams to proactively educate the public about litter issues, while also helping to clean state roadways.
Triblive.com also reported a team of Norwin High School students in Westmoreland County were selected as the District 12 winners.
The students — John Christian, Joshua Gubanich, Jordan Loy and Elias Mignogna — propose using a specially designed smartphone app called PALS (Pennsylvania Litter System) to aid law enforcement by allowing motorists to report litterbugs.  Click Here for more.
Background
Since last fall, students have been working hard to solve this year’s challenge: Aside from laws, programs and educational campaigns, what cost-effective, innovative solution can be developed in the next five to 10 years to help PennDOT more efficiently, effectively and safely control litter along roadways?
“Last year, PennDOT spent nearly $13 million cleaning up roadside litter across Pennsylvania,” said Acting PennDOT Secretary Yassmin Gramian. “These dollars could have otherwise been spent on delivering a better transportation network and making Pennsylvania a better state in which to live.” 
Now in its third year, the PennDOT Innovations Challenge invites high school students in grades 9-12 to use their problem-solving, creative and strategic-thinking abilities to solve real-world transportation challenges.
The Innovations Challenge aims to not only help students explore actual transportation challenges that PennDOT is facing, but also open their minds to the very real possibility of working for PennDOT after graduation.
"Students really benefit from opportunities like the PennDOT Innovations Challenge. They apply the skills learned in class as well as research and employ new technologies and concepts to solve real-world problems. It is very satisfying as an instructor to see students invested in their learning,” said Dietz about the experience.
Gunkle added "The PennDOT Innovations Challenge is a wonderful opportunity for students to engage in a real-world problem-solving scenario.  It's exciting to see students work through the stages of researching and developing an idea and then creating a prototype and presentation for a panel of judges.  We are proud of the commitment and effort these students showed throughout." 
Other regional winners will be selected as judging continues who will move on to compete in Harrisburg for the state championship.
The Pennsylvania Chapter of the American Traffic Safety Services Association and the Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful (KPB) organization are providing a combined total award of $3,000 to be divided among the first, second and third place statewide winning teams.
For more information on the competition, visit PennDOT’s 2020 Student Innovation Litter Challenge webpage.  [The deadline for entries has passed.]  Questions about the Challenge should be directed to: DOTInnovations@pa.gov.  
Visit PennDOT’s Roadside Beautiful webpage to learn more about litter prevention and cleanup programs.
Learn more about new litter prevention initiatives at DEP’s Litter Program webpage.
For more information on programs, initiatives and special events, visit the Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful website. Click Here to become a member.  Click Here to sign up for regular updates from KPB, Like them on Facebook, Follow on Twitter, Discover them on Pinterest and visit their YouTube Channel.
Also visit the Illegal Dump Free PA website for more ideas on how to clean up communities and keep them clean and KPB’s Electronics Waste website.
Sign up now for the 2020 Pick Up Pennsylvania Initiative and volunteer or set up your own cleanup event through May 31.  Questions should be directed to Michelle Dunn at 1-877-772-3673 Ext. 113 or send email to: mdunn@keeppabeautiful.org. 
[Posted: March 11, 2020]  PA Environment Digest
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