Carolyn Jack

Editor and CEO, Geniocity.com
A project of The Genius Group LLC

A truly fair opportunity to excel at creativity

Where does a 14-year-old get the creativity and and aptitude to prove the co-evolutionary relationship between two different species? 

From nature and her own brain, of course – but good teachers help, says Michele Glidden,  director of science education programs for the Society for Science and the Public, which co-presents the annual Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. The 2009 fair, which was held May 10 through last Friday in Reno, Nev., drew 1,500 high-school science students from over 50 nations.

The 14-year-old in question, Tara Adiseshan from Charlottesville, Va., was one of three $50,000 grand-prize winners at this year’s fair. But about one-third of all the participants took home awards for projects demonstrating independence of thought, independent research, creativity and innovation – qualities the society and the fair try to encourage, Glidden said.

The way the fair does that is not by steering students toward particular fields or topics, but through what Glidden calls “a great structure and system” of local school and community fairs supported by teachers who guide their students and help them find lab-study opportunities and summer research programs.

“We attempt to stay unbiased,” she said. Instead of influencing their project choices, ”We  provide the forum to recognize and celebrate their successes.”

But one area in which the society and fair would like to exercise some clout  is underserved communities, whose youngsters may not have access to well-trained teachers and fully equipped facilities. Glidden says the society has just begun a new fellowship program for teachers in reduced-lunch or Title IX schools. The society reached out to teachers in underserved communities last fall and, by January 2009, had about 200 applicants, between six and nine of whom have been named fellows.

They’ll receive scientific training and the resources they need to coach students through independent-study projects, Glidden says. “Teachers are really begging for that kind of resource and knowledge.”

The program may help give a more equal chance of success – at the fair and in their careers - to students who don’t come from cities abounding in scientific-research institutions and money. Yet the fair’s history shows that winners don’t always hail from obvious centers of scientific excellence such as Boston – last year, one top winner came from Mississippi, Glidden says.  

“Fair” is a word they take literally at the society: Judging winners on the quality of the project alone is one of their key principles. This year, the highest prizes were earned not only by 14-year-old Tara, but also by 16-year-old Olivia Schwob of – yes – Boston and by 17-year-old Li Boynton of Bellaire, Texas: all girls. And the 2009 event was not the first in which three young women – or three young men, or a mix - have made up the circle of grand-prize winners.

“My final group of judges, when I told them they had picked all women, they weren’t aware they had done it,” Glidden recalls. 

Many of these young people go on to become scientific thinkers and researchers, she says. In fact, the 60-year-old Intel Science Talent Search, the society’s and Intel’s annual science-research competition for high-school seniors, has seen seven of its participants go on to win Nobel Prizes.

But the real point of the fair and the talent search, Glidden says, is to benefit students educationally “no matter what they do”  with their lives.