The as-yet unnamed club, as sponsors Mr. Jason Beltz and Mrs. Kerri Misko fondly call it, is sure to catch attention with its theme. In this club, the general idea is that different schools compete in order to respond to challenges issued by well-known companies.

In the club, students work in groups of four to creatively tackle a topic proposed by major companies, in this case, Heinz Field and Shell, and the students can present their ideas utilizing a set technique, which is determined in the rubric for each challenge. Not to mention, each student in their respective group could be in charge of a different aspect of the presentation usually playing to their strength.

For the Heinz Field challenge, students were asked to devise an alternative power source for the stadium and the Pittsburgh region as a whole.

“Talking to some districts last year, they kind of teamed up based on: who’s really good at engineering? Who knows computer programming so that someone can put all the programming together? Who’s really good at art,” Mrs. Misko listed off during the first meeting.

The first meeting was September 12 in Room 306, during which there was a brief introduction where everyone shared their names, strengths, and interests with the teachers. The students then were placed in small groups to answer a topic question.

They were left to deliberate the best ideas and point out any issues to ideas proposed.

“The problem itself is to develop unique ideas to power Heinz Field, power Pittsburgh, in the future using renewable resources,” Mrs. Misko had written on the board.

Most students had ideas related to hydropower and harnessing the energy from Pittsburgh’s rivers, but others considered ideas that included solar power and using runoff to provide power.

The main portion of the project that presented to the sponsoring company can vary in simplicity.

“The project applications can be a drawing, presentation, model, PowerPoint, or display,” Mrs. Misko stated.

From the wild grins to understanding nods, the 20 students who attended the preliminary meeting certainly were interested. For this month’s competition, the students needed to create a model of their project

“I think it's a great idea, but I'm not sure if I'll have enough time for it. I think it will probably be a pretty solid club,” said senior Sean Livingston, one of the attendees.

There was a team of three and a team of four from Beaver Area that competed: Josh Mateer, Cindy Liu, and Kate Verone, as well as Sean Livingston, Annika Hay, Jacob Graleski, and Nathan Croud.

The competition was October 18 at the Beaver Valley Intermediate Unit. Nine teams competed, but only the top three can move on to present their ideas at Heinz Field to Shell Corporation November 15.

“Overall, I thought my group did well,” said senior Jacob Graleski.

Central Valley earned first place, with Beaver County Christian in second, and Beaver Area’s team of three in third! Beaver’s team of three, along with the two winners, will compete against the top three teams from Lawrence County and Allegheny County November 15.