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Raking in Rewards
 What started out as a project for a design class earned Ryan Jansen much more than a grade. Jansen's design, "The Rake N' Take," won first place in the 2008 Eye for Why - Dyson Student Design Competition. The national contest challenges students to re-envision an existing product, correcting any shortcomings in it.
Jansen improved on a lawn-care staple, the rake. Observing how often people raking their lawns had to bend over to pick up the leaves, he decided to find a way to take that time-consuming nuisance out of the raking process. His design uses a combination handle to operate a rake that clutches the leaves rather than merely moves them.
The project was conducted in faculty member Walter Hargrove's class in the School of Art and Design. The assignment: enter a new design in a contest. Jansen, a senior, entered the International Housewares Student Design Competition, where he won an honorable mention.
He entered the Dyson competition as an afterthought. His winning design earned him $5,000, a trip to New York City, media interviews, and a meeting with inventor James Dyson (famous for his bagless vacuum cleaners). His advisors, Hargrove and Steve Belletire, won $2,000, which they donated to the School of Art and Design.
Jansen will now represent the U.S. in an international-level competition. He has a patent pending on his invention and says he has several options for marketing the product.
—by Andrea Hahn
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