The senior Science Research students at John Jay High School, like their peers across two counties, have been hard at work. These students have reached their third year in the program, and each one has prepared a presentation to showcase the culmination of the work they have put into their projects during those three years. Their research topics range from seed priming to hermit crab behavior to fungal disease, but they all share one common goal: to gain the approval of the judges and move on to compete upstate.

Like programs at other area high schools, the Science Research program (nicknamed SciRe) at John Jay is a three-year program, during which students develop their own research projects with the assistance of a professional mentor, eventually presenting their findings at symposia like this one. Through the program, a student can pursue their scientific interests, apply their classroom learning to field research, meet experts in various scientific disciplines, and gain recognition from colleges. 

In the Westchester-Rockland Junior Science and Humanities Symposium, seniors in Science Research programs gather at one school to showcase their work for judges, who then select students from each category of the sciences to award. The top students move on to another symposium upstate in Albany. This year, the symposium was held at John Jay on Saturday, January 28th, which gave me the fantastic opportunity to volunteer as an ambassador during the day, and to sit in the audience for some of the presentations. 

A lot of preparation is required before the actual event. Signs need to be posted, presentations need to be put together, speeches need to be rehearsed, and so on. To organize all of this, younger SciRe students who aren’t presenting serve as ambassadors. Some ambassadors prepare the school building for the symposium; others clean up afterward; some serve to help the visitors by guiding them to their destinations and assisting them with whatever else they needed. I signed up to guide visitors. 

I arrived early that morning, before the symposium had begun, and headed down to the SciRe classroom where I was handed a name tag, a guide to the presentations, and a purple sheet for notes. My role was to stand at a specific spot and assist anyone that needed help. As I waited for the event to begin, I read over some of the topics that would be presented. Fascinating presentations were planned across all the event categories (animal science, cell biology, behavior science, etc.), and if I had had the time, I would have gone to all of them! Sadly, that was not possible—the symposium’s schedule made it so that you had to choose only one presentation category per block of time. 

I decided on Animal Science, which was nearby, and went in to see many spectators already there. I took my place at one of the available desks and took out my notes sheet and pencil. As a SciRe student, taking notes was mandatory: I was required to take notes on four presentations while I was at the symposium. My notes would include details on each section of the presenter’s project (background, purpose, hypothesis, review of literature, methodology, results, conclusions, and so forth), as well as an assessment of the quality of their oral presentations, PowerPoint organization, formal attire, and the project itself. This event was geared mostly towards the judges being able to assess the quality of each presentation—the other spectators were not permitted to ask questions. The judges were each allowed to ask a single question of every presenter after the presentation had concluded. One thing that was interesting was that presenters who had similar topics (for instance, birds) focused in on totally different scientific questions. 

The variety and quality of presentations was incredible, and I would certainly recommend that any JJHS student who is potentially interested in SciRe, or in pursuing a STEM subject in college attend this symposium in the future. While this is a competition of sorts, it is inspiring to see that all of these students are making positive contributions to a wide variety of scientific fields, whether or not their project is chosen to advance. That said, I will attend the Upstate New York Junior Science and Humanities Symposium at Albany next month, where I will be cheering for the lucky JJHS students who will be presenting there!