The Virginia Dominion Energy Envirothon is a team-based natural resources competition for high school students. It takes place in local, regional, and national areas, consisting of students learning concepts and working to solve real-world environmental problems. This year, Woodgrove formed its Envirothon Team and won in regionals. This team may not be VSCO girls, but they are definitely saving the turtles.
Senior Dagny Kannengieszer formed Woodgrove’s first ever Woodgrove Envirothon Team. She approached science teacher Ms. Kathryn Gemmer in August of her junior year about coaching the team, and then for the next two months, she sent out announcements to recruit members. By October, the team had four members, and by November, exchange student Mahithaahsan “River” Totini was very interested, resulting in their fifth member. Kannengieszer shared the time-consuming process of creating the team. “It took me about over a year just to get enough traction around here to make it work. I started with advertisements, and my mom works for the Woodgrove Weekly, so she helped me make some, so I put some flyers up. I got Mr. Schutte to help give me a slideshow. I had some people with the main person who came with Andrew Dean, and they just helped me find other people,” shared Kannengieszer.
The competitions are a full day and teams are tested at stations including wildlife, forestry, soils, aquatics, and the special topic. This year, the special topic was the Monacan Indian Nation. The students work through packets together testing their knowledge on each topic. Questions can range from just multiple choice to looking at a diagram or a picture and explaining its contents. Once the students get to the area competition and beyond, they start doing the presentation portion, which is where they are given an issue, and the team needs to come up with a plan. This year, the team helped the Monacan Indian Nation, and they figured out what they wanted to do with their Laurel Cliff property in Amherst, VA. Kannengieszer’s group decided they wanted to plant chestnut groves and start making a community garden to help with some of the environmental issues in the area. They also had to pick from certain areas or topics they wanted to cover.
Woodgrove’s Envirothon Team’s first competition, the local competition, was on March 15. The most recent one was April 26, which was the regional competition. Unfortunately, the team did not make it to the next competition. Kannengieszer explained her team’s studying strategies, saying, “The Loudoun Soil and Water Conservation District provides [my team] some bins full of practice material, so we use that in each bin as dedicated to four of the topics. [My team] was quizzing each other and looking at stuff we’ve learned over the years. For example, a lot of what I brought in was from AP Environmental Science.”
Academic opportunities like Envirothon highlight environmental science, because it is not as well known compared to other sciences despite the importance of the global changes and impacts of the world around us. Envirothon is another amazing opportunity for Environmental Science lovers or people who care about the environment. Gemmer shared what kind of person could be a good candidate for the team. She said, “I would say the number one most important thing is a passion for the environment. Also, you have to be committed to the team. If you are particularly interested in one of the topics, that is helpful for the specialists.” If you are interested in joining or learning more, go to the Envirothon website envirothon.org or contact Gemmer.