Winners of the 2025 Utah High School Clean Air Marketing Contest will be announced at Utah State University’s Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art Community Art Day on Saturday, Feb. 8, at 10:30 a.m.
Clean air public service announcements (PSAs) created by this year’s 61 finalists will also be displayed at the museum as part of the event. After the awards ceremony, people of all ages can celebrate clean air by creating small woven artwork that tells people’s stories of our shared environment as part of Community Art Day.
This year marks the contest’s 10th anniversary. The museum is hosting a retrospective exhibit featuring 27 past winners since 2015. The exhibit, supported by a grant from Logan City, opens on Feb. 1.
The Utah High School Clean Air Marketing Contest was created in 2015 by professors Roslynn Brain McCann of USU Extension Sustainability and Edwin Stafford of the USU Jon M. Huntsman School of Business. The teen-designed PSAs combine art, science, and savvy marketing to encourage Utahns to help keep their air healthy through carpooling, using alternative transportation, limiting idling, trip chaining (completing multiple errands at a time to limit unnecessary driving), and skipping the drive-thru. The messaging and artwork are often provocative, funny, edgy, and tied to teen pop culture. The winning PSAs will be displayed for educational outreach across the state and on social media.
Five celebrities serve on the judges’ panel to select this year’s winners. They include environmental authors Bill McKibben and Terry Tempest Williams, pop singer Jessica Baio, ABC4 News meteorologist Cedric Haynes, and professional skier and activist Caroline Gleich.
The contest is intended to raise Utahns’ awareness of air quality issues by helping youth who are learning to drive understand the implications their new driving privilege can have on air pollution. It also helps them engage in ways to preserve air quality, especially during Utah’s polluted winter inversion season.
Stafford and McCann’s research finds that for many participants, the contest is the only formal education they receive about local air pollution. As they talk about local air pollution with their families and friends, the students then become air quality influencers in their own social networks.
McCann said contestants report becoming more committed to clean-air actions, and parents report being influenced by their teens to engage in clean-air actions. In turn, those parents encourage others in their own networks to be mindful about preventing air pollution.
“Our research shows that the contest is having an impact beyond the teens in educating Utahns about how to help clean up our air,” she said.
Over 1,150 teens from Utah and southern Idaho participated in the 2025 contest. Participating high schools include Logan, Ridgeline, Fast Forward, Green Canyon, Carbon, Whitehorse (Montezuma Creek), Westside, Preston, Grand County (Moab) and Granger (West Valley City).
“The entries seem to get better and more thought-provoking every year,” Stafford said. “Creative competitions are important vehicles for educating youth as they spark the fun of learning, a competitive spirit, and self-discovery that you just can’t replicate in the classroom.”
Over $6,000 in cash and gift cards will be awarded, all donated by local businesses, organizations, and individuals.
The free event begins at 10:30 a.m. and includes refreshments. With the help of Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art’s education staff, those participating in the art activity after the awards can create a canvas and pipe cleaner weaving project.
Visit artmuseum.usu.edu to stay updated on museum events, and extension.usu.edu/cleanaircontest/ for more information about the contest and to view the winning artwork.