This month, the University of Minnesota Morris hosted more than 140 high school students and teachers for the second Morris Challenge Rural Youth Institute, an interactive experience focused on renewable energy and community sustainability efforts throughout the Morris area. This is the second year that UMN Morris has hosted the event and the first year they have partnered with the City of Morris and Morris Area Schools.
This experience-based, one-day event connected high school students and their teachers with UMN Morris faculty, staff and students who showed them real world examples of how UMN Morris has worked with its community partners to address sustainability challenges over the past 20 years.
The event started with a ride to the City of Morris on electric buses owned by Morris Area Schools and featured tours of wind turbines and solar panels that capture clean energy for campus, a composting program that has kept over one million pounds of food waste out of the landfill, a biomass plant that heats the campus, and a newly-installed lithium ferrous phosphate energy storage battery that captures and stores energy so it can be used when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing.
Area high schools that participated in the 2023 Morris Challenge Rural Youth Institute included: Alexandria; Belgrade-Brooten-Elrosa; Benson; Chokio Alberta; Clinton-Graceville-Beardsley; Kalon Prep; Kimball Area; Minnewaska Area; Morris Area; Montevideo; Osakis; and ROCORI.
According to Morris Challenge Director Doug Reed, the mission of the Morris Challenge Rural Youth Institute is to show young people what’s possible when a community commits to doing the work required to build a more sustainable future.
