I am using Metafizzy's Isotope plugin and have it set up to filter using a select menu as seen here: http://jsfiddle.net/trewknowledge/jJZEN/

    $(function() {

    var $container = $('#container'),
        $select = $('#filters select');

    $container.isotope({
        itemSelector: '.item'
    });

    $select.change(function() {
        var filters = $(this).val();
;
        $container.isotope({
            filter: filters
        });
    });

});?

What I am trying to figure out is how I would add a highlight/active class to the selected elements when the filters variable is already being used.