Kate, a sophomore at Presentation High School, custom engineered the bicycle for her own weight and build, so it will most likely never even show up on a retail showroom floor. But even though its innovative design had never been unveiled to the public before March, when Kate presented her prototype at a local science fair, bike-shop owners everywhere were sure to find the working contraption at least vaguely familiar.

Kate's bike is made completely of cardboard, and the construction materials are made from the very same corrugated-cardboard boxes that new bikes are packed in when they come off the trucks.

"She said she wanted to demonstrate something having to do with recycling," says 65-year-old John C. Howe, Presentation High School math teacher and adviser who on March 17 took Kate and a group of 23 other girls to compete at the 2004 Synopsys Science and Engineering Fair at Great America.

But Kate did more than achieve that goal. After examining the construction, engineering and design of her project, judges at the event awarded her an Honorable Mention in the category of physical sciences. For her bike, she also won special awards from organizations and institutions like NASA, the Society of Women Engineers and the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps, as well as a first-place award from the Society for the Advancement of Material and Process Engineering.

Moreover, she took second place for a technical paper she submitted entitled, "The Cardboard Bicycle: Testing the Limits of a Composite Material."

But she wasn't the only success story coming from Presentation High School that day. Out of the 24 students that the high school fielded, 18 of them left the fair with some sort of prize or honor.

Classmate Lauren Careccia's project, which examined the oxidization rate of apples and various ways to delay the onset of oxidization, won a second place in its category. Lauren and most of the other students credit Howe with getting them involved in the science fair.

"He was a big inspiration," she says. "I didn't even know there was a science fair like this before I took his class."

Howe says that since around 1979 he's been touched with "a missionary zeal" to do as much as he can to provide the means necessary to get more women involved in the sciences and math. At the time, the mathematician was serving on a panel as a science adviser to the Vermont legislature. A nun, Margaret Brault, who served on the panel with him, kept coming to the meetings wearing a small cross with the number 59 written just below it on her lapel.

Because she was a nun, the meaning of the cross was obvious, he says, but for a long time the significance of the number eluded him. Eventually, he decided to ask her about it.

Fifty-nine cents, Brault said to him, it's the amount of money a woman earns for every dollar that a man makes doing the same job.

After the "quiet, demure woman" pointed that out to him, he says he noticed that a number of women he knew in the fields of medicine and sciences had to be nothing short of extraordinary to be considered any kind of success in their fields. And from then on, he made it his agenda to do his part—no matter how small—to try to bring about parity to the situation.

After retiring from what he calls a career in the military-industrial complex, he says he found a place that would allow him to make that difference. Five years ago, he began teaching mathematics at Presentation High School.

"I came to the school with a very specific goal," he says. "I came to demonstrate that a young woman can do math and science just as well as any man."

If the showing of his students at the science fair is any indication, he's succeeding. Eighty-seven percent of his students came back with something, including Samantha Tran and Kristina Tubera, who succeeded in winning the grand prize in the physical sciences category for their project called "The Physical Chemistry of the Ice Spikes Phenomena."

Despite the impressive record, says sophomore and Willow Glen resident Kayla Ladd, winning wasn't everything.

Kayla and her partner Kristen Barker took home a grand prize alternate position for work simulating the effects of objects hitting the earth and studying the impact craters left in their wake. Their "Simulation of Terrestrial Impact Craters" also earned them a number of special awards and cash prizes.

"My fondest memories about this whole experience are of my partner and me working all night to get our project finished," Kayla says. "A lot of our nights didn't end until 10 a.m. We missed some classes because of it.

Howe says studies have shown that over time, people who have done well at science fairs as children generally tend to take up science-related careers when they get older.

Preparing the young ladies for successful careers in science and technology will not only help them in their future workplace, he says, it'll help society as a whole.

"In the 21st century, we'll need to use all the powers of our society to the fullest," he says. "This is a world of mathematics, science and technology."