2005 Tawes Award Wiiner Youth Category Kennard Elementary School Advanced Ecology Class in Queen Anne’s County

Tawes Awards The Tawes Award is an environmental recognition program sponsored by the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) and the Maryland Petroleum Council (MPC) in the name of late Maryland Governor J. Millard Tawes, who was also the state's first secretary of the Department of Natural Resources (DNR). The award is open to any individual, civic, community, or non-profit entity that has demonstrated outstanding efforts to enhance Maryland's environment over a period of time or with a single project. For more information on the Tawes Award for a Clean Environment, please call (410) 269-1850 or MDE's Office of Communications at (410) 537-3003 . Winner - Kennard Elementary School Advanced Ecology Class in Queen Anne’s County The 4th and 5th grade students of the Kennard Elementary School Advanced Ecology Class (Queen Anne’s County) chose to be involved in “extra-curricular” projects and assumed these added responsibilities with enthusiasm and energy, often working on weekends. Their projects included: the Reef Ball Ecology Project where students studied the animals and plants that live on reef balls in the Chesapeake Bay; the Raptor Research Project where the students collected baseline data on resident raptors at the Chesapeake Bay Environmental Center; the Recycling Program which was expanded to collect white paper and plastic containers, in addition to aluminum cans, and created a new “Recycling Hall of Fame” to recognize two classroom winners each week for recycling. Students also studied diamondback terrapins and prepared them to live in the Chesapeake Bay on their own; studied rainforests and created a three-volume book on the Chesapeake Bay; and conducted a debate on mute swan population control. Students include: Lillian Rousseau, Samantha Rossi, Kiley Pignatero, Amanda D’Ambrosio, Amanda Delayo, Alana Spears, Jodie Blunt, Paul Jones, Jesse Durbin, Colleen Carter, Kyle Dean, Nicholas Panor, Jack Draper, Seamus O’Brien, Kyle Wood, Daniel Thiesse, Alex Werle, Emily Vooris, and Johnny Gygax.