By Daisy Hassani
Gargoyle assistant editor
Posted Wednesday, April 12, 2006, The OG, news

Isaac Chambers, Nate Kim, Alan Liang, and Allan Luo have won a regional award in the 2006 eCYBERMISSION competition sponsored by the U.S. Army.

The freshmen, who called themselves the “Problem Toasters,” earned the Northwest Region's Team Collaboration and Communication Award for their project, “Lowering Obesity and Creating a Healthier Community.”

Each team member will receive a $2,000 savings bond for the project. Biology teacher David Stone, the team's adviser, will receive a Materials World Module kit for hands-on classroom learning activities.

Last year, as subbies, the same students won their region's Innovation, Originality and Creativity Award, which also earned them $2,000 savings bonds. Their 2005 project offered ways to improve traffic flow problems at the University of Illinois.

The eCYBERMISSION contest is a Web-based science, math, and technology competition that allows students in grades six through nine to challenge for regional and national awards while working to solve problems in their community.

The Uni team's project consisted of a multi-part plan to reduce obesity in Champaign-Urbana. The members came up with strategies such as creating a food item labeling system with color codes to make food labels easier to understand. The project also included a plan for the development of an exercise policy for businesses. According to the team's ideas, both large and small businesses would provide exercise guidelines for their employees. In addition, larger businesses would have built-in employee exercise facilities. Other aspects of the team's plan included taxes for unhealthy foods, educational and advertising campaigns about obesity, and a system of live competitive exercise over a gaming console.

The team met once a week with Stone to develop the project.

“I was an adult team member,” Stone commented. “When it came to writing, I'd step back.”

Stone said he was surprised the freshmen won for collaboration and communication, which was a “regional criteria” award. The team was eligible for one of six regional honors: first overall (in which case the members would have advanced to the national round), second overall, or one of the four criteria awards (Team Collaboration and Communication; Benefit to the Community; Innovation, Originality and Creativity; or Science, Math and Technology).

“There are a number of other categories that project would have fit better under [instead of collaboration and communication],” Stone said. “But the fact that they won an award is significant. It was a really good project.”

According to Chambers, the challenges the team members faced helped to improve their project.

“It's not like we agreed on everything,” said Chambers. “But that helped us to develop a stronger and more effective solution.”

This year 1,111 teams, consisting of 4,035 students, competed in the eCYBERMISSION contest.

Even though the team members have already received recognition for their project, they hope to continue working to spread their ideas.

“We really want our project to make an impact, so we plan on trying to get it published so that someone with a little more influence can help us make our project a reality,” said Chambers. “I think we all felt the topic we dealt with this year, obesity, is especially important now more than ever.”