Innovative Success
by Becky Swiontek, NIU STEAM Educator
This past fall NIU STEAM and the Northern Illinois Center for Community Sustainability (NICCS) launched the 2026 Innovation Challenge for high school students who are looking for an opportunity to get creative and solve a real-life problem. Our goal was to provide a team-based challenge where teams of students could choose from two food system problems and collaborate to design a new and innovative solution to problems currently being researched by NICCS. Along with the generous sponsorship and support from Molex, we were able to welcome five teams of students to campus this past February 28th, and it was a great success!
As a former high school teacher, it was so wonderful to be in the presence of these teenagers who have been working for months to learn about the multiple facets of these problems and come up with viable solutions. They interacted with industry partners, NIU faculty, staff and current students with ease and enthusiasm. Our friends in the College of Business also facilitated a fun workshop in the morning where the groups were challenged to further consider human-centered solutions and make a change to their solution. It was so great to see their wheels turning while considering feedback from the mentors and judges throughout the competition. Such professionalism from our future thinkers and leaders!
This year our winning teams were from Romeoville and DeKalb High Schools, where the top three teams each earned a cash prize to use at school to support their club or classroom. We want to send our sincerest thanks to our partners at Molex, NICCS, the College of Business, our industry partners and mentors, as well as the teachers and students who made this event possible. As we look ahead to the 2027 Innovation Challenge, we have hopes and aspirations to get even more teams of students involved! And who knows…one of the solutions they come up with could be our next big innovation!
Check out this story about the NIU Innovation challenge by WNIJ’s Education Reporter Peter Medlin to learn about more of the projects in this year’s challenge!
