Each month, iParenting.com spotlights a teen who inspires and moves us, who embodies the qualities that we all admire in a person, a friend, and a son or a daughter. Above all, the Teen of the Month is dedicated to making a positive mark on the planet. Rich or poor, famous or not, the Teen of the Month shines as an example of what today's teens have to offer.

Traditionally, iParenting chooses only one person as the Teen of the Month, but after hearing about this group of determined young men, it became obvious that some rules are meant to be broken. Intelligent, socially aware, environmentally conscious and with an ability to work together that most adults would envy, these five students are a model for how much today's teens can accomplish –not only for themselves, but for the future of all of us.

Nick Barber, 16, Markus Fish, 18, Doug Fynan, 18, William Rouse, 18, and Jeff Stempka, 18, recently took first place in the 2003 Canon Envirothon, the largest high school environmental competition in North America. Organized through the National Association of Conservation Districts, the Canon Envirothon is the final competition in a series of contests beginning each spring that involves more than 500,000 teenagers throughout North America. Representing their high school, North East High School in North East, Pa., each of the team members won a $3,000 scholarship.

The Canon Envirothon
To understand how much dedication and knowledge it took for this team to take first place in the Envirothon, it first helps to have a bit of background on the program. The Envirothon began in 1979 when various County Conservation Districts held local events in Pennsylvania. Described on the Canon Envirothon Web site as the "Environmental Olympics," the goal of the competition was to encourage high school students to become interested in natural resource conservation and environmental issues.

The program continued to grow in popularity and began attracting interest from neighboring states until, in 1988, the Pennsylvania Association of Conservation Districts hosted teams from Ohio and Massachusetts at the first National Envirothon. In 1997, Canon U.S.A., Inc., began supporting the Envirothon and in 1999 became the title sponsor.

The Envirothon is a hands-on outdoor competition designed to challenge and test the teams' knowledge of soils, aquatic ecology, forestry, wildlife and current environmental issues. In addition to general knowledge testing, the competitors have to identify bird calls, animal calls and various trees and plants. What this means is that the kids involved have to put in a phenomenal amount of preparatory work before they even can begin to compete. It can be tough on an already busy teen.

"When they first asked me to join the team I wasn't sure if I'd be able to fit it into my schedule," says Stempka. "I'm busy with basketball and golf and president of the student council, and there's literally a truckload of information you have to learn."

A True Team
But as any of the boys will attest, it goes beyond just learning. Barber, Fish, Fynan, Rouse and Stempka were already a team before they became an official team for the Canon Envirothon. They were all members of Boy Scout Troop 57 and have spent many hours together camping. In fact, they drove to the national competition straight from a camping trip in the Adirondack Mountains. They probably should have been exhausted. Instead, spending that pre-competition time in an activity where they had to work as a team to survive actually motivated them to go even further.

The competition is divided into three levels: county, state and national. When they first decided to enter the competition, they were serious about competing, but as Stempka explains, they didn't want to kill themselves over it either. The team knew that they would probably win at the county level since their school's team has done so every year for the past 10 years, but had no such confidence about the state level because the team who won there last year was still together and competing again this year.

"We would have been satisfied to come in second, but as it turned out, we won by one point and went on to the nationals," says Stempka. "After we arrived at the national competition, straight from our week in the Adirondacks, we sat down and talked as a team and decided we really wanted to take a run at it, and that's how we approached it."

Their approach worked, but not just because of their unusually close team ties or their formidable intelligence. All five young men also have a rare connection to the environment that can't be learned in books or by listening to tapes of bird calls. Fish, Rouse and Fynan are all Eagle Scouts, and both Stempka and Fynan describe every member of their team as "avid outdoorsmen."

"I love hunting and fishing, and if I'm not working or in school, I'm in the woods or on the water," says Fynan. "This is where my heart is. I also love learning, especially about nature and the environment, simply because I want to know as much as I possibly can about everything."

They also credit their coach and scoutmaster, John Hallenburg, who has been involved with the Envirothon and in scouting for many years. Stempka says it was Hallenburg's presence as the team advisor that helped him decide to join the team in spite of his time constraints.

Winning Futures
With their victory behind them, Fynan and Stempka are now headed off to college – Stempka to Penn State Behrend where he'll be studying business and marketing, and Fynan to the University of Michigan to major in nuclear engineering. Although their majors aren't specifically environmental, both plan to incorporate environmentalism into their lives and careers. For Stempka, it may be the opportunity to help corporations become more environmentally friendly. For Fynan, it may lead to finding the solution to what causes not only much of the world's current environmental problems, but many of its wars: the need for energy sources.

"Right now energy requirements are causing most of our environmental problems," says Fynan. "Nuclear energy provides a lot of answers, but it creates another urgent issue of what to do with the waste; we can't just keep burying it in the ground. We need to solve the problem now."

With dedicated teens like this working on the future of energy and environmentalism, the problems already seem a little more manageable.

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