You Be the Judge

This has been my third year volunteering as a school science fair judge. The first time was because a teacher friend of mine asked me, but now every year I'm the one asking, "Can I do it again?" far in advance of when anyone at her school has considered circulating the request.

Science fairs make me smile. Though I've joined the ranks of "grown up" scientists, I like to point out to my colleagues that these fairs never stop. They just change the name to make them sound more professional: "conferences". Seeing kids standing in front of their carefully designed display boards, wringing their hands as they wait for the judges, hearing them recount their adventures with excitement and fielding our questions ... I can't help but picture these kids years from now in front of posters depicting their thesis research at an American Chemical Society conference. The words and concepts they use may get more technical, but the format remains the same. And hopefully the enthusiasm does, too.

Based on my experiences and advice from coordinators and other judges, I keep my strategy for interacting with the kids simple: promote curiosity, confidence, and fun. The actual time I spend with any one kid's project is less than 15 minutes, and I want the kid to do most of the talking, so having an effective "outreach" experience in this situation takes some strategy. But if you're looking for ideas, here's mine:

A Booth for the Youth -- High School Career Fair

Last week I got the opportunity to man a booth at a career expo for local high school students. First of all, how come they never had these when I was a kid? Maybe they did and they just weren't on my radar. The concept is extremely cool. It's like "science fair" meets "career day". People from all kinds of local companies and organizations are invited representing a huge spectrum of careers in science, technology, engineering and math. Each of us presenters get a big table where we can set up displays with pictures and props representing our careers. Then we just stood there for 3 hours and let the kids and their parents wander up to us and ask us questions about ourselves, our career, and how we got there. Over 600 people attended. It was just plain fun.

In preparation for doing this I used my secret weapon for generating awesome ideas: Google. I typed in "high school career booth." I only got one hit that made any sense at all, someone asking the web-verse for advice on how to do a good one. The consensus? Candy. Ply your audience with sugar. Since I was already volunteering my time, I wasn't too enthused about also volunteering my money to give kids cavities, so I skipped that tip.