The 13 teens, all participants in the 2004 Pennsylvania Governor's School for Information Technology (PGSIT), designed a Web site for P.S. U Vote, a campus group aiming to reverse the decades-long decline in the number of college students who vote.

Mike Eisenhart, project leader and a rising senior at Warwick High School in Lancaster County, chose the P.S. U Vote project because of his interests in politics and Web page design. But he learned far more than how to put a site together.

"The most challenging part was interviewing our client and understanding what was wanted," Eisenhart said.

That included a calendar of events, information on how and where to register, candidates' platforms and a mock vote. The teens also added some other features such as a discussion board, a section of candidates' quotes and scrolling news headlines.

Making sure P.S. U Vote was non-partisan was as big a challenge as was designing the site, said Aesha Mehta, a rising senior at Moravian Academy in Bethlehem, Pa.

"We wanted to be sure we had the same number of links for each candidate, but we also had to be sure the links weren't biased," Mehta said. "A lot of sites are partisan, so we had to make standards to determine what was non-partisan."

Each summer, governor's school students choose a community-service project as part of their five-week PGSIT program, and Web site design is almost always one option. With a presidential election looming, a Web site geared to politics made sense.

"The broader goal was to promote interest in voting among college students and these high school students," said Cecelia Merkel, a post-doctoral student in the School of Information Sciences and Technology (IST) and one of the instructors for the project. "It's important to get students into the mindset of voting, so it becomes a part of their lives."