Photo by Lester Smith
Akshita Jindal, an eighth grader, is pictured at the display board for her Science Fair project, “How Age Affects Short-Term Memory.” She won Second Honors at the Connecticut Science Fair in March. Many of the Science Club members put their projects on display in the SHS rotunda on March 20, after the fair closed.
This year 25 students joined the Science Fair Club, a new record for the activity, which is in its fifth year at Suffield High School –its first year when seventh and eighth graders could join, as well as high schoolers. And a record 17 members completed their projects for competition at this year’s Connecticut Science Fair in March at Quinnipiac University. Club advisor Mitch Charkiewicz is proud that every one of the 17 won at least some sort of award at the big fair, which is run by the Connecticut Science Teachers Association.
Among the special award winners, Caitie Kirschbaum, an SHS senior, did best for take-home cash: She received $300 for the Barnes Aerospace Applied Technology Award and $150 from the Connecticut chapter of the American Society of Safety Engineers. Her project was “A Novel Approach to Measuring Reaction Times in a Simulated Driving Environment,” which entailed designing, building, and using a rig with a brake pedal and a lap top computer, along with the programming needed to measure one’s response time to various scenarios.
Three other special award winners were Ryan Cleaves ($75 from the Office of Naval Research for “Self-Defogging Ski Goggles”), Zachariah Service ($50 from the International Society for Automation for “A Small Spectrometer to Find Peanut Butter Ingredients in Food”), and Akshita Jindal ($25 from the American Psychological Association for “How Age Affects Short-Term Memory”).
Six Club members were awarded Second Honors (in the top two percent of the state) and 11 were awarded Third Honors (the top three percent).
Club advisor Charkiewicz had retired from over 20 years teaching economics at CCSU in 2010. Finding retirement boring, he approached Principal Donna Hayward at SHS for listing as a teacher substitute. After reviewing his credentials, she persuaded him to sign on as a full time academic resource teacher. More recently his subject has been math lab.
He had been a judge in the Connecticut Science Fair, and he was surprised to learn that in the fair’s almost-70-year history, Suffield had never sent a contestant. He soon got approval to open the Science Fair Club here.
A few weeks ago, Charkiewicz learned that the Society for Science & the Public has named him as an Advocate Grant Program recipient for the next school year – one of 45 science fair advisors selected nationwide. The society will bring him to Washington for training in June. And as this article was being prepared, he was told that he had been named one of the six Lead Advisors among the 45.
Photo by Lester Smith
Mitch Charkiewicz, advisor for the Science Fair Club at SHS, has been named a Lead Advocate in the Advocate Grant Program of the Society for Science & the Public, one of only six in that status nationwide. He plans to accept the opportunity for training in Washington given by the Society in June.