BY JENNIFER DOME
Staff Writer
BRICK — Four students from St. Dominic’s School are on a mission.
Carly De La Hoz, Nicole Del Bene, Dominick Liberatore and Jessica Lichnowski were selected last fall to compete in the U.S. Army’s eCYBERMISSION. The program is a free, Web-based science, math and technology competition that has students design a project based in one of four areas: sports and recreation; arts and entertainment; the environment; and health and safety.
Joanne Arnold, one of the project’s advisers and a teacher at St. Dominic’s, said the students first had to write an essay to be chosen to design the project for the competition. The four eighth-grade students chose to focus on the environment — specifically, pollution in the Metedeconk River.
“We thought it would be good to choose the Metedeconk because it’s our source of drinking water,” Nicole said.
The students did extensive research for the project — including interviewing a representative of Save Barnegat Bay, former Township Council President Stephen Acropolis, Brick Township Municipal Utilities Authority Executive Director Kevin Donald, and state Sen. Andrew Ciesla (R-10th District). Dominick said they wanted to see what officials at the local and state level were doing to protect the drinking water.
The students also used the La Motte water-testing kit to test water at three marinas in the township — Baywood, Traders Cove and Windward Beach marinas — and the students found there was a presence of coliform, according to Jessica.
Part of the competition was to design a project that would be beneficial to the community. In fact, when the project is turned in by Feb. 22, it will be judged in four different areas: 40 percent will be based on science, math and technology; 20 percent on innovation, originality and creativity; 20 percent on team collaboration and communication; and 20 percent on its benefit to the community.
Nicole said their goal was to tell people to worry about their community as much as they worry about themselves.
The students have spread the information they learned, and their plea to be aware of marina pollution, via their Web site: www.savethemetedeconk.org. They also made a public presentation at the Feb. 8 Township Council meeting. Robert Zolkiewicz, another project adviser and the school’s computer technician, said the students used PowerPoint for their presentation to the council and also learned how to build the Web site themselves. All components of the project will be submitted to their project monitor with the Department of Defense at Fort Monmouth via the Internet.
Although the students have worked on the eCYBERMISSION project before and during school for the last few months, their work isn’t completed yet. They want to help spread the idea that boaters, and township residents in general, can help curb pollution in the Metedeconk. They have produced educational brochures and want to post signs at local marinas.
But now that their project has been formulated and executed, they can’t wait to see how it fares in the competition. In the first round of the regional contest, the students each stand to win a $2,000 savings bond. The second-round award is a $3,000 savings bond, and the national winners receive $5,000. The finalist team receives a $3,500 additional savings bond per student and a trip to Washington, D.C.
“Our main mission was to make an awareness to the public,” Arnold said.
“We hope people will listen to us and use trash bins,” Jessica said.