 Hi everyone. I'm Terry Eastburn from the UCAR Center for Science Education. Today we have Russell Chadwick. He is a PhD electrical engineer and President of the Board of Directors for the Colorado Science and Engineering Fair. He's been involved with the Colorado Science and Engineering Fair for 44 years, so he's a wonderful person to tell us about it and he's retired from NOAA. The Atmospheric Sciences has some background there and he'll give us a little bit about the history of the Science and Engineering Fair and how to get involved with it if you're interested in judging or interested in giving it in other ways. After Russell tells us a little bit, we'll also hear from Nancy Glissman and Gwyneth Glissman who have been involved with the fair as well. So without any further ado, Russell. Thank you. As you may realize, they always ask the old retired guy to do the history. And so that's my assignment today and I'm just going to go ahead and do it. And we are the Colorado Science and Engineering Fair, something about me, again retired from NOAA. The second speaker is going to be Nancy, Nancy Glissman, who handles our judging. And the third speaker is going to be Gwyneth Glissman, who's a CSCF alumni and has won the NCAR award. And the first thing that I'm going to talk about is the history behind Colorado Science and Engineering Fair and then I'm going to tell a little bit about the finance. The first thing is where all of this starts is a long time ago after World War II and it became clear that radar was a big influence in World War II and it was decided we need to know more about propagation in order to make sure we use radar well in future wars. So Congress decided that the National Bureau of Standards should manage a civilian agency, not a military agency because of the demobilization after the war. And so everything why we're here is based on radio propagation research local topography and of course local fundraising and the National Bureau of Standards decided that there should be a competition around the cities around the country where this new facility should be placed and they said well it has to be close to an airport so that people can fly back to Washington remember this is the early 1950s late 40s early 50s and Stapleton met that need here it has to be close to a university that offers graduate programs and CU met that program met that requirement and the tough one it has to be close to a radio quiet zone that put us here in Colorado on the shortlist because radio quiet zone is hard to come by but if you think of north of Boulder Table Mountain I'm talking about the Table Mountain north of Boulder not the Table Mountain down by Golden it's a flat top Mesa 1800 acres and that flat top meets the requirements for a radio quiet zone and it's one of two radio quiet zones in the country today and so that's the reason local topography is the reason then that NBS moved here selected this site also local fundraising when I came here in 1970 my landlord that I rented the first house from was the chairman of the local fundraising committee and he told me I had to go back to my big contributors three times to get enough money to buy the necessary land that was needed before NBS would move here and that move started the big scientific migration to Boulder because after NBS moved here NOAA moved here NCAR moved here ball brothers moved here IBM moved here in just the next 15 years so the reason a lot of us are here in Boulder and the reason that that Boulder has the scientific character it does is because of radio propagation local topography and local fundraising so uh the lab that was formed it's called Central Radio Propagation Laboratory part of the National Bureau of Standards started in the early 50s the original staff members lived or had offices in rental properties around Boulder my first boss his office was in the Boulder Auto Hotel for two years but in September of 1954 President Eisenhower dedicated the building that you know as the NBS building or now the NIST building on South Broadway and then shortly after that the first science science fair was held in 1955 less than a year after President Eisenhower dedicated the building and 150 students from Colorado Wyoming attended the fair and it was successful and we've done 59 of them since then this is the 60th year and now it went on at about 150 students but the facility could only hold that many and so in 1970 the fair moved to Cinderella City Shopping Center in Denver and if you were around then you remember that there was plenty of space there because it was a mall that couldn't rent all this space and so there was plenty of space for us but there's one or one problem it didn't have a lot of science and engineering it wasn't like the Bureau of Standards or it wasn't like Colorado the universities in Colorado so in 1981 we moved to the Laurie Student Center at CSU essentially to get more space but also to get closer to science and engineering so that it would be a better experience for our students to come to our science fair and we've proceeded since then in 2000 Courtney Butler our present fair director when she came that year there were 279 participants and now in the past 12 years or so 15 years that has grown to about 310 recently but that is packing them in to Laurie Student Center we couldn't put another single student in there and last year we had a problem it was a big remodeling effort going on at Laurie Student Center and it wasn't available to us and so last year we had to rent a nearby hotel the Hilton Hotel that caused two problems less space so there were only 251 students and also more cost because renting the Hilton was cost a lot more than renting the Laurie Student Center so that's the the situation as of last year but this year again because of Laurie Student Center remodeling there will be a lot more students and we will have space for up to 400 students from around Colorado to participate in our fair and we take we have regional fairs that can cover Colorado 13 of them and they send us their winners in junior high and senior high and again from around Colorado and last year we sent 14 of these students to ISAF international science and engineering fair and STS the science talent search both of these are sponsored by Intel Corporation and we've sent our students there for many many years and they've won lots and lots of awards in fact over the past 15 years Colorado students have averaged over a hundred thousand dollars per year in winnings in awards that have a cash value associated with them you know and that doesn't include trips and it doesn't include awards that don't have uh money associated with them and it's interesting that our science fair budget is about a hundred and fifty thousand dollars now that includes money that Intel sends to us that we redistribute to our regional fairs because we want our regional fairs to be strong because that's where our students come from and if you stop to think about this we our budget is about a hundred and five thousand none of it from the state of Colorado all from donations and our students bring back that much money and more so this is a good deal for Colorado this is a good deal believe me um some of the uh award the the trips that are given the that are at ISAF to over 13 countries the winners the various winners at ISAF are 13 countries including places like Japan China Switzerland numerous others including the Nobel Prize ceremonies and last year one of our students got to go to the Nobel Prize ceremonies because of his uh entry into uh uh international science and engineering fair and we keep a close connection to Intel and four of our uh board members serve on the ISAF display and safety team and they also we we send them to the uh international science and engineering fair to simply to uh well to participate in the display and safety team but also to chaperone these 14 kids because these are young scientists going to some place that's kind of interesting and we want them to be chaperoned and controlled so we we have four people who go along to keep track of them our going to the ISAF is for our seniors but our middle school students go to a another type of competition called the Broadcam Masters and these are junior high middle school students where uh $75,000 is awarded each year to the winners and we've had numerous entrants from Colorado win those win money at Broadcam Masters um many CSEF students uh our winners give Ted internet talks so it's a very useful experience to participate in Colorado science and engineering fair and we want lots of people lots of students in Colorado to be able to participate and finally uh at Intel at the Intel uh both uh Intel uh international science and engineering fair and the STS competition CSEF is considered one of the top state science fairs in the country we've been going for this will be our 60th year and we're going to keep going and so uh that's enough of the history and let me now call uh Nancy Glissman our grand awards judging coordinator for uh Colorado science and engineering fair she's been involved with the science fairs and CSEF since 2001 she's a member of the board of directors and she's the one who decided I was the old retired guy who had to talk about history and so I've done it I've done my uh my duty and now she's going to talk about uh judging you so much first of all I want to thank you guys for letting us come and talk about this because it's extremely important as well as being an amazing opportunity for kids all over the state so it's it's it's so competitive as you well know out there for kids to get scholarships so this is a great great place for these kids to get an ability to go through college and get good degrees and come back to Boulder and work at NCAR so so there's a huge impact that the judges have the grand awards judges there are special awards judges that um do you come specifically like for an NCAR award will come specifically looking for certain criteria whereas the grand awards judges are looking for first through fourth in each category in each division so just to give you a couple of examples here there are thousands but Sarah Volts this is fairly recently and uh she she started this is Sarah right here in eighth grade and uh just she started growing I think it was bacteria in her basement and underneath her bed it was just it's very interesting she did uh it's a fuel replacement project and she in 11th grade won the first place in talent search talent institute and went on to have an interview with Obama and just really did amazing things and of course I had to include my children this is Robert and Gwyneth and uh they've each attended the Colorado science and engineering fair from sixth grade on and both have attended uh the intel uh international science and engineering fair twice each of them and uh it has paid for their college education as well as um I mean it just makes a huge impact the the interaction of the judges the grand awards judges on the future it certainly has a not my family and I know hundreds of families that feel the same about this so why should you be a grand awards judge at CSEF I do get this question so there are 13 as we talked about earlier there are 13 regional fairs that feed into the CSEF and these kids come from all sorts of backgrounds from Walsh Colorado to Grand Junction to Sterling to Durango I mean they're it's fascinating to see you know what's important for these kids to do in their science fair projects and uh this year is very important because we are adding a hundred extra science projects which can be you know team projects of three kids or two kids and so it's really important this year we are I've been recruiting since December to hope hope to get some really great people there to evaluate these projects and all we try at the I try very hard to make sure and and I have some great captains like Russ that manage the teams and they will get um three every project will get at least three interviews and sometimes more and we try for more because there are so many effects and having more interviews and so it gives the kids an opportunity to better get a better exposure a project receives the project is better understood if you have a larger group of judges that are that are looking at a project so you have a better way of evaluating it than just by you know if you had two or three judges it would be pretty tight there and most importantly regardless of whether these students win you know first place or nothing I mean there is huge value in what happens to when they all go to the science fair especially the state science fair because they meet other children from all over Colorado obviously but the students get gain experience in presenting their project to multiple professionals with expertise in the area of their project so if there is a student that's extremely interested in biology or climate change they're talking to people that are working or are studying climate change so it's it's it gives them an idea okay well this really is something I want to get involved with this is where I want to go when I get out of high school and I think that's it also gives them presenting the project both verbally and visually is a hugely valuable experience and again it doesn't matter if they win or lose it's they have had this opportunity to do something that is really valuable to their future writing an abstract it's amazing how this experience of writing an abstract is is something that over time is extremely valuable uh the other thing that we do is we ask the judges to all provide feedback to all the projects that they interviewed which is hugely important we found this with my children that you know they say well why don't you add this to your project or have you thought about doing this you know and it's it's not about being not not being constructive it's about being very constructive and trying to provide positive feedback how they can improve you know extend their scope or other areas that they might be interested in beyond what they're doing in this project one thing that terry suggested to me which what I thought was a brilliant idea is getting out the ucar ncar bus and having judges come up in that because that would be extremely make it a whole lot easier for boulder residents to get up to fort collins and it's uh we only i look through my database and we only have two judges signed up from here right now so we'd love to have more that would be fantastic so this is another question that is asked of me a lot of times and especially for first time judges they do you need experience doing this we have some like us we have some very experienced people who are captains who have been there several years and know the process we require for middle school judges to have you know at least be in an undergraduate they can't be a high school student for senior division we need an undergraduate degree and above to be able to judge in that area all of our information is on the website which i have a screenshot here that you can look at but on the judge information page if you scroll down there are all these documents that you can look at if you sign up to judge register to judge a lot of this stuff is already there and you can download the judges guide the schedule and we'll have more stuff up there they're already abstracts up there for the this year's fair so it's coming in so and here's a screenshot where you can see this is our website page and here's a sponsor link and then what you're looking at right here is the grand awards judge information page and you know obviously we couldn't get it all on here but if you scroll down then you can see where the documents are where the abstracts are and and what and they show the division what division you want to look at what category you want to look at so and right here is all you have to do is click this to register so the next page is actually our registration page and right here we have a discussion of conflict of interest which is obviously very important because if somebody is involved with a project mentoring a project they can't judge the project or if they have judged the project in another fair they cannot judge it again at the CSEF so but it's it's pretty self-explanatory it's really easy to create an account and I'll be sending out information email or if you require mail there's a place where you can check that and I will send it by mail but it's very easy to register it's very very uh and I have heard wonderful wonderful things from people new judges and people that have been doing this and we have like Russ we actually have Dean N has been there since the very beginning as a participant or a judge and he's he's been a captain of our senior chemistry for you know he loves this he is totally dedicated to doing this and there are people that are have been there year there we get a lot of students that come in and judge uh like it's especially from CSU so we need some CU students as well but uh it's I think that it's an extremely important and valuable experience because it makes a huge impact on the lives of all these children not not just the winners but the ones that say wow I really want to come back and do this again I really want to make this you know something I do every year not just because my teacher told me but because I want to come back and so it's been you know I think that that my favorite favorite part of the whole fair is handing out the grand awards on Friday night and uh shaking the hands of all these especially the middle schoolers because they are so amazing and I've come close to having broken fingers but but they're they're really special and uh you really see the impact you know a lot of the judges don't make it because it's you know it's a long day and they don't want to come back on Friday but it's a very special opportunity to see the awards handed out to these students because it it does it means so much to everybody so and I would like to go on and introduce my daughter Gwyneth Glissman who is alumni of the science and engineering fair Colorado science and engineering fair as well as an international science and engineering fair she is a member of the board of directors at ccep and right now she's currently attending the University of Colorado and that is where you can contact my mother if if you have any questions all right so I'm basically going to uh speak about the student's point of view and what is luck to to be able to have this opportunity to compete in the science fair and what it brings to you as as a student so here's an embarrassing picture of me while I always say uh competing in the science fair uh I think this might be my sophomore year um I did uh multiple years I I started in uh uh c-scrace uh and went to eighth grade uh freshman year sophomore year and my junior year of high school and uh my first project uh was um about snowmelt and half past eight months on all nature branch that was my my sixth grade project and my eighth grade project I did I built the actual uh CO2 scrubber uh and put it on my car my parents car uh it works for like five minutes but it did work so that was excellent so my freshman year uh the year before this I did a project with with my brother my older brother and we looked at a climate modeling on a a PCA computer rather than on a large scale scale a measure computer and so we figured out that it's really hard to do this but we were able to look at specific independent variables and and model them and trade dimensions and we did pretty well we uh we won first place at the uh the regional fair we won I think second place at the the state fair and we went on to the international science fair and we won uh 20 000 dollars from uh homeland security uh as well as a bunch of other opportunities while we were there then my my sophomore year uh of high school I started my two-year project where I looked at albedo geoengineering and for those of you that do not know what that is which is probably a very few uh it is artificially increasing the earth's uh reflectivity in such a way that it compensates for the heat increase uh due to climate change and so basically I came up with my own proposal uh and wrote a bunch of programs to examine a bunch of data uh that showed that it's my proposal would work and it would postpone the impacts of climate change so I did roll off I won first place at the regional fair I won first place at the state fair all fair at the CSF and then I went on and won some pretty big scholarships at the international fair so I was able to pay for college which is excellent uh so that's been it all right so basically I'm not going to explain what it what it's like to put together a science fair project and what it takes for a student to get to CSF to to to take to to those of you that will be judges uh so first of all for me specifically I'd say obviously different for everyone but that would start in the summer way before the school year would start and begin by by fountain areas that that I'm really passionate about but things that are really fancy interesting and would specify I moved into a specific idea for for my project and from there I would do research for weeks and weeks and weeks and just figuring out all that I could know about that area for research and then I would come up with a project question uh what what I wanted to to to look into uh and then I would figure out so how I was going to do it how what kind of experiments or or programs I had to to write to to in it in order to to examine uh set idea and uh after that uh I would really get into the integrity and for a lot of this case you know we have have all of these these things that you have to do at term middle school as well as high school and a lot of demands on your time so it does require a lot of sacrifice if if you want to do all in the sense for you if you have to give up a lot of your time uh in order to to to do your research and uh for a lot of these kids say you know this is mandatory and middle school you are supposed to to to do this but a lot of the high school students this is this is voluntary they have taken a huge chunk of their year out to to to do this research on their own time and most of them are not they don't have a mentor or someone that is guiding them through so it is mostly on their own shoulders for what they're doing this project and what they're they're putting the time in and so it is a extremely important for for these students to to focus on this and and after after all of the experimentation and all that is done you start putting together uh what you're going to show to the judges what what what basically visually what what your project will look like and if i can go back see the behind me you can see like like what what what the science fair boards looks like and i was lucky enough to be able to to to show my like programs and and the illustrations of my data on my birds which was really cool on it on the computer screen uh so these basically teaches teaches these students how how they need to show their research how they need to show the progression of of their touch patterns how how they come to specific conclusions and be able to show their data in a way that that anyone looking at it will understand and that is one of one of the biggest things that facing scientists is is the ability to communicate their sciences it is very difficult in most most colleges do not do not teach their students how to do this and how and and skills and how to to show to to express your science and so that that is one of the the biggest things that i'm most proud of of the science fair is not not the worst data form not not not the recognition i've received but the fact that i have learned to be able to communicate you know why that that anyone can can understand me can understand what what i'm talking about because you know you can come up with the biggest finding ever the most influential finding of the edge but if you begin to communicate it and if no one understands you no one's going to hear about it and no one's going to be interested and so that is a really key part of the science fair is teaching these young kids how to do this so that they can progress and do it do it later in life so after weeks and weeks of doing the experimentation and then practicing your your presentation putting together your boards putting together all your grits making sure everything is is understandable you start to compete in the science fair and it begins at the school level where they compete at their school against all our kids at their school and then they progress to the original fair and for for my my region which is boulder valley uh we had the ability to go directly from the boulder fair all the way to international we should unfortunately net net origins have that opportunity but we are you once you get past that you go to this state fair where there's you know so many so many opportunities you can have you can win internships with with a different institutes you can win monetary process cash process as well as a tour savin car at the regional fair you can win scholarships to to many to many colleges in colorado you can win all of these awesome process but like my mother takes about the the biggest price here for the students is to be able to talk to people in the areas that they are so fascinated in to be able to see people that block everyone it and car that are working in these areas that are have gone through the process of school we have done all these things to be able to talk to them and really really talk about science that both interest both of you that that fascinates both of you and be able to connect and and see what what maybe their future will will bring to them and so at the state fair you get a lot more more uh experts and professionals in their field and so after that you can go to the international fair which is montblanc because it's basically the the olympics for for science fair you know you have countries from all over the world so i i think the last time i competed there was at least 70 countries uh 1500 kids competing against each other these are basically the smartest people from all over the world competing together and what is funny is a lot of people i smell like why didn't you do science ball you know it's a lot of fun you get a team together uh and you compete against other teams about facts and all that but the thing about science fair that that i love so much is it it teaches you the scientific methods it teaches you how to do research rather than memorizing facts and and keeping scientific facts in in your heads which is very cool you know you can whip out the facts for your friends or to to take to other people but but it's not nothing like being able to understand a scientific method and to to utilize it later in life so now i'm going to talk about other opportunities that that the science fair exposes the students to which i've kind of that's done already but uh so for me personally i started at the regional fair it was incredible because i got internships at the national center for national snow and ice data center in star as well as a couple other places i had a small volunteer internship team here to yukar for a while i did all these things and i wouldn't have been able to to find these opportunities without the exposure of the science fair because it it brings you know potential mentors in connection with the students they actually want to learn they actually want to be here and and talk to them and it really forms its connection and creates a bigger network between the students and their potential mentors so all right so basically uh what kind of impact does the science fair have on its participants uh basically what i want to take about with this is you know you can either have a negative impact on the students or you can have an extremely important impact uh one one judge i had at the boulder regional fair uh because my project on a butter share engineering is so uh so i uh controversial uh of a of a subject to to be looking at especially for it for a high schooler uh it's kind of but but negative feedback and one of my judges you know came up to to me and told me i hate your project but you know tell me about it and so he was my he was my first judge and it was so so uh disheartening for me and it affected the rest of the day for me because like as a as a high schooler you have you have no filters you have no no you're not cynical you're not you're not uh you're not uh you haven't gone through years of of research years of tall years of dealing with people people that that disagree with you and so it is your first exposure to this and it can frighten people away from from wanting to to to continue in in this area and and i know that the kids that that their computer wants it one time and they were exposed to a negative experience and and they were immediately they did not want to come back and so what what what uh i love talking to to these these uh these potential judges about this is that you know you you can have have a fundamental impact on these kids you can exhaust them you can bring them them to to the fair just by showing it just by talking to them and i mean yes you are going to get the the the few students that that are not not super excited but you know being in a nerdy group and and having to compete in this atmosphere but there are all the rest of them that are there that are so excited to be speaking with with with anyone that is willing to talk to them about this project that they put weeks amounts of of work into and it's it's such such a cool opportunity to be able to to to learn and to to start your your scientific career in in at such a young age and learn these things that you know when i when i started college when i uh i'm at the co and in a southern science and and most of if not all the other kids in in my my major in my classes they had no idea how to write an abstract and so it's been like edges learning how to write an abstract and and and for those kids they don't go into the sciences after doing this atmosphere it's just a way of expressing yourself without lots of words which is so important because you know you can when you're talking to someone like like today i've been very worried but you know when you're talking to someone and the ability to talk to simply to to express yourself you know what it is clear is important for everyone and so being able to to to teach these kids at a young age uh about this and will have such an impact in it and it exhausts them as well as as the judges i mean most of the judges that i've i've talked to you like i've never once made made a judge that did not have an amazing time talking to these kids because say you know if you're really really connect with these students see it it changes their lives it changes your life and so being able to have have uh you guys come and talk to these kids would be amazing and so you know please contact my my mother about about judging in in the grand awards and if even if you can't judge you know if you're busy the days of the fair you know you can sponsor you can you can help fund money for the fair you can help fund money for to send more students to the international fair and give these kids the opportunity of a lifetime and and be able to to make a difference on on our on our future generations and so please contact my mother about a judging or a risk about the ways of sponsoring and and uh if you have any questions uh uh from me specifically about what it was like for for me as a student uh please uh there is part for for my mom and i will answer any questions that are that are put to her so thank thank you very much for the opportunity to come in and text you to ruin