On July 25, the Lexington High School Envirothon team won the 2025 National Conservation Foundation-Envirothon hosted at Mount Royal University in Alberta. The team was composed of ‘25 alums Erin Suh, Tomer Elkayam, Caroline Ehmann and Eileen Ho, as well as senior Jocelyn Chen.
Envirothon is an environmental competition that tests participants’ knowledge in subjects like forestry, aquatics, wildlife, and soils. Teams have 6 hours to prepare and create a PowerPoint presentation around a given topic and present to a panel of judges.
“I was always interested in environmental stuff, because I was always a very outdoorsy person. I wanted to do something to help protect natural resources. Envirothon always had a lot of tangible, community service and action-based projects,” Ehmann said.
In preparation for the national competition, the Envirothon committee provides several official study materials, including manuals and booklets on each subtopic that competitors are responsible for.
“We practiced presentation-making sessions [of around] three to six hours long, where we would create a PowerPoint presentation on a prompt that one of us would come up with. This ended up being very helpful for the national competition, because we got better at time management and splitting up work along the way,” Chen explained.
Unfortunately, since participants compete entirely outdoors, they are also subject to harsh weather.
“It was really cold and rainy during both states and nationals,” Chen said. “Because the competition is entirely outside, that’s just something that you have to work through, and it’s not really something you can predict.”
Despite the inevitable challenges, the LHS Envirothon offers new connections and personal growth for the team.
“I think the biggest thing I’ve learned throughout Envirothon has been how to get better at public speaking, [including] speaking on the spot to a large crowd of people. I’ve learned a lot more about things like communicating with [others] and negotiating [for environmental causes],” said Chen.
Ehmann echoed Chen’s reflections.
“Envirothon has taught me so much; obviously field skills, but also [skills like] advocacy,” Ehmann said. “[Envirothon] is helping me today in so many ways, mostly because it’s taught me collaboration skills, leadership skills, and the whole natural resource side of conservation.”
