Young Scholars busy at Clarkson

POTSDAM — While other high school students were mowing lawns or enjoying the beach, 22 teenagers from around the country spent the past week at Clarkson University learning about and designing anaerobic digesters.

The Young Scholars Program is a weeklong summer camp that helps prepare students for the college experience by presenting them with a common problem. This year, its participants tackled waste, looking at ways cow manure and rotting food can be converted into energy sources.

"Sustainability is about finding new ways to solve problems," said Kailin L. Schwan, 17, Buffalo. "This teaches people that there's more you can do than just turn off a light, because when we're grownups, we're going to come up with machines that are more eco-friendly, don't produce toxins and help on the grand scale of helping the Earth."

Miss Schwan plans to return to campus in a few weeks to take part in the Clarkson School, a program that allows high school juniors to earn their general equivalency diploma and get a leg up on their freshman year of college. She said she already knows what her major will be: environmental engineering, with a minor in chemistry.

Keith D. Parysek, also 17, of Corning, said he came to Young Scholars because Clarkson is his top choice for college and he wanted to get an idea of what he would be studying and what the campus is like.

The scholarship money is nice, too, Mr. Parysek said. The college offers every student who completes the Young Scholars program a $4,000 scholarship toward tuition if he or she chooses to attend Clarkson.

Virginia Beach native Christopher R. Roth, 15, came up with a novel idea for the two anaerobic digesters he was helping to design along with several other students. Using some formulas he remembered from chemistry class, he suggested a way to "scrub" the biogas created by the digesters of the byproduct gases of hydrogen sulfide and carbon dioxide before they reach — or damage — an engine.

"It jogged my memory from chemistry. It's different than a textbook standpoint. It shows you how chemistry can help in the real world instead of just in a test," said Mr. Roth, who stayed at Clarkson for the Young Scholars program after spending the previous week there for a hockey camp.

The 22 students, who hail from Maine to California, presented the results of their studies to community members, farmers, professors and parents Saturday.

"These are problems complex enough that even we don't have the answers," said William Vitek, who is an associate professor of the humanities at Clarkson and one of the program's instructors. "I always like it because you get young people together to think about a topic, get them to believe they have something to say about it and then see what happens. Anyone who's cranky about the younger generation should spend a few days here. We'd cure them."