The Student Bio Expo: A Student's Perspective
Andrew Kennard
Garfield High School
photo by Dhileep Sivam |
I lean forward in my chair, deep in concentration. I can almost feel pieces of information flying through my brain; my brain is in overdrive trying to pin them down. Blood-brain barrier…protein-based drugs…petit mal…lamotrigine…What does it all mean? I’m slowly trying to tame this tempest of concepts I’m learning into something coherent. And I’m having the time of my life.
This exciting mental struggle was part of my work on a project for the Student Bio Expo, an annual science fair that focuses on the biological sciences from every angle. Students address almost any subject in the life sciences, and they do so in a number of creative ways: art and music projects, teacher lesson plans, or traditional research projects, just to name a few. |
One of the best features of the Expo is the system of pairing willing students with mentors from the scientific community. These relationships help to inform the students’ project as well as give them a glimpse at what being a scientist is really like. In my case, I got to work with a scientist from Amgen Inc, one of many biotech groups in Seattle that help to make such scientist-student relationships possible.
My mentor was very helpful with my project. I wrote a journalism-style paper that summarized the current medication situation for epileptics and suggested possible future courses of action. My mentor scheduled a phone interview for me to talk to her former graduate school professor, who happens to specialize in the brain and neuroimmunology. The experience of talking to real scientists about these issues was one of the most unique and compelling academic experiences I have yet had. The research I conducted for my Expo project required me to think more than I had in any of my high school classes, and because of the amount of work I did I was proud of the finished result. The Expo itself magnified my excitement about my project into an electric feeling. I saw almost 300 other projects by students who had also put hours and hours into thinking about bioscience. Talking with them and the passionate scientists at the Expo showed me how amazing science can be, and also how promising the future of science can be, if only such opportunities to forge inspiring relationships continue to exist.
We must support these scientific connections in our community. Today’s news is characterized by jaw-dropping leaps in scientific progress that open even more vast areas of knowledge to explore, with great potential to make life better for people and environments all over the world. It is an amazing and inspiring time to be a scientist. Yet U.S. students fall behind 16 other countries in standardized science tests, and a recent study found that almost 80 percent of surveyed students wanted more funding for hands-on science.
As a student, I found the most exciting moments to be those when I connected with scientists and got to peek at the work they do each day in the realm of discovering things, of expanding the human experience through knowledge. The more the scientific community encourages these links—through fairs like the Biotech Expo, forums like Seattle’s Science on Tap, and personal mentorships with students—the more students like me will discover the joys of finding out. With the help of the current generation of scientists, the ranks of future generations will swell, inspired and better equipped to advance progress for humans—and all life—everywhere.
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