The Class of 2022 passed another milestone on Tuesday, May 21, with the inaugural FIRE History Sustainability Projects Exhibit, held in Walter Hall Gym. A special visit from their 8th-grade cohorts made the event all the more special as students engaged in sophisticated discussions and offered valuable feedback for the entire community to consider. To borrow from one group’s project about the sustainability of lemonade businesses: the students really squeezed the day!

This event culminated the recent FIRE unit on the theme of sustainability, which students considered from a variety of perspectives. Topics ran the gamut from fields of politics, pharmaceuticals, economics, and artificial intelligence to a variety of environmental concerns relating to pollution and climate change. After they selected their particular topic back in April, students had to perform research relevant to the larger theme, write about their findings, and then create a thoughtful physical model of a sustainable solution, which they presented on Tuesday. In the spirit of sustainability, teachers prohibited “first-use” materials in the creation of the models, so students had to find second-hand resources in school, at home, or in local community centers.

Overall, this unit involved significant interaction with the wider Moravian community, highlighted by visits from Moravian parent and Lafayette economics Professor David Stifel and from alumna Claudia Fischmann Mattison ‘03, a consultant on sustainable engineering and project design, back in April. The following teams earned prizes, courtesy of the Demsky Family and ArtSkills, Inc.:

CATEGORY A: Most Pleasantly Surprising

• TEAM 13: “How to Sustain a Fair College Process?” (Jamilie Atiyeh, Nikki Chiaradia and Christian Manja)

CATEGORY B: Most Original in Design and Execution

• TEAM 28: “REVIVE: Cleaning the Earth Through Clothes” (Bea Shannon, Priya Francis and Juliana Blobe)

CATEGORY C: Likeliest to Succeed

• TEAM 27: “Sustaining Small Businesses” (Eszter Hiscott, Samantha Abraham and Diana Lopez)

CATEGORY D: Most Personally Meaningful

• TEAM 4: “What Sustains High-School Student Mental Health?” (Veronica Burchielli, Olivia Crane and Alison Riker)

CATEGORY E: Best Overall

• TEAM 23: “Water Scarcity” (Favor Ufondu, Sam Carter and Anna Mayer)

The freshmen now look towards the end of the academic year and the completion of their Independent FIRE Projects!