What a concept

Danette Goulet

At age 19, Janette Felix may be the youngest rising star in the

automotive marketing field.

The Estancia High School senior stood in the school’s hallway Wednesday

morning with an oddly shaped concept car that Toyota is considering for

development.

As students checked out the compact silver car, Felix was trying to get a

feel for its consumer market, handing out surveys and answering

questions.

But she doesn’t work for Toyota. Not yet.

As part of her senior project, Felix is testing the market for the Toyota

Will, which resembles a space-age version of a Volkswagen Beetle.

Hers is the first class of seniors at Estancia required to complete a

senior project in order to graduate.

The successful completion of a senior project is one of several new

graduation requirements for which students within the Newport-Mesa

Unified School District, beginning with the class of 2003, will be

responsible.

But faculty members of Estancia’s English department decided that since

it was such a good idea, there was no need to wait, said John Yeomans,

one of the senior project coordinators.

“The senior project is a culmination of their education,” Yeomans said.

As could be expected, seniors were not enthusiastic about the new

requirement at first, but many views of the project have since changed.

“We were pretty mad,” said senior Mike Firner. “A lot of people said they

weren’t going to do it until they found out they needed it to graduate.”

Firner designed and created his own Funk CD, complete with a

professionally designed cover graphics.

“Now I actually like [the senior projects],” Firner said. “It was a

learning experience.”

Project topics varied from sports to skydiving, to fashion and design.

Each student was required to research their topic and conduct interviews

with experts before writing a research paper. They were then to decide on

a specific project topic and spend a minimum of 15 hours working on it.

The projects will culminate with an eight-minute student presentation to

a panel of community members outside of Estancia.

Felix’s project will have a slightly broader effect, however. Her survey

results will go back to Toyota Motor Sales in Torrance, and ultimately to

the Toyota manufacturers in Japan.

Her father, Carl Felix, who works in design research for a Newport Beach

firm, helped his daughter to obtain the car Wednesday morning for a brief

showing at the school to aid her marketing research.

In return, Felix will share her student survey results with Toyota, which

plans to market the car to younger, first-time buyers.

Although Felix began her senior year researching design, she became

increasingly engrossed in marketing -- something her father attributes to

her extensive shopping experience.