Ren Herzog, Emi Loucks, Mayahuel Malik, Simon Orlie-Frost, and Nicole Southey

Radon and Hand-Washing PSA Videos

Nomination:

My name is Kathy Rodems, and I am a teacher at Uni High.

I am nominating Emi Loucks, Nicole Southey and Ren Herzog, graduating Seniors, and Simon Orlie-Frost and Mayahuel Malik, current Juniors, for the Wylde Q. Chicken Award. These are all students in my Topics in Social Justice Course.

I am nominating these students because they wrote, filmed, and edited two videos this year for the class, and neither of these projects were truly required. These students worked incredibly well together and had such interesting and creative ideas.

The first video they made was for the Illinois Radon Video Contest. The students were consistently engaged and enthusiastic while working on this video, even when the project required work on the weekend and outside class. Here is the video. Given the current circumstances of Covid-19, we do not know the current status of the contest. They were supposed to choose a winner in late April.

The second video they made was for the Champaign-Urbana Public Health District. We visited the office in mid-February for a tour. The director and epidemiologist spoke to us about the possibility of when the Coronavirus would arrive in CU (this was about 2-3 weeks before U of I closed), and asked us to write a song, video, or infographic about washing hands that they could share with the local schools. The students in my class made all three. Here is the video with song (they wrote, performed, and edited the video) and infographic (attached in both English and Spanish). We finished and submitted them right before we left for Spring Break.