On Wednesday morning in Washington, D.C., the American Petroleum Institute (API) held final presentations for its “Educating Our Energy Future” case+ competition at API’s headquarters. Fourteen U.S. colleges and universities participated during their fall academic term, tasked with designing and developing educational products, tools and resource materials to increase awareness about the role that natural gas and oil have in our everyday lives. Each team was responsible for determining their own specific target audience of young people, including researching the target’s awareness and knowledge about the role of natural gas and oil.

This semester, program participants connected with over 600 educators and 1,200 students throughout the term. Final reports to the client included which content and topics the target audience found most interesting and which outreach mechanisms proved most effective.

Three schools were to be identified as the finalist teams on December 7.  However, due to the outstanding quality of the submissions received, API chose four schools to present at the final presentation meeting. After judges’ deliberation, the winners were announced as follows:

1st place: Ohio Dominican University – The Power Up Passport
2nd place: University of South Carolina – Y.E.S – Youth Energy Science
3rd place: University of Central Oklahoma – edPower
4th place: University of Houston – Expecto Petroleum

API leadership presented the teams scholarship awards of $10,000, $7,000, $5,000 and $2,500 respectively.