LM_Summer_2017

Jake Knox and Daniel Rashid, 2015 winners, demonstrate their flaming oscillator (Rubens’ tube) which uses propane in a pressurized tube with speaker to visualize sound waves.

Celebrating High School Innovators awards program– Looking for students doing extraordinary things

By Michael Chamness IASA Director of Communications

Paul Ritter Pontiac Township High School

Three years ago, Pontiac Township High School collaborated with the University of Illinois on the Celebrating High School Innovators (CHSI) awards program. It was an experiment that has yielded great results and now features Illinois State University and Millikin University as partners. The introductory language on the CHSI website pretty much sums up the purpose: “Too much emphasis is put on grades and test scores. Instead, we recognize high school students for accomplishing amazing things, regardless of their GPA, ACT or any other acronym. Have you taken great ideas and made them a reality? Tell us what you’ve done that’s innovative and creative, and you might be chosen as one of the most innovative high school students in Illinois!” Paul Ritter, a biology, ecology and earth science teacher at Pontiac Township High School who has achieved national recognition, is the director and co-founder of the

CHSI program. It’s just one of many initiatives for Ritter, who won the 2014 White House Presidential Award for Innovation in Environmental Education, and was named the National Environmental Science Teacher of the Year in 2011–12. His International Prescription Pill and Drug Disposal Program (P2D2) was named the number one environmental program in the nation by the United Nations in 2012 for leading his own students to properly dispose of over 3.5 million pounds of pharmaceuticals. Other significant projects Ritter has led at Pontiac Township High School include the Cell Phone Recycling Program, the ecology class “Adopt a Highway” Project, the Ecology Billboard project, the Student Weather Radio Program, and the Bio-diesel program. Ritter’s courses and projects have been a source of inspiration for many of his students who have gone on to become environmental filmmakers,

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