The Intel International Science and Engineering Fair: Picking the Best, Encouraging the Rest

by Dick Miller
Senior Member, Willamette Valley Chapter, STC

The Intel International Science and Engineering Fair culminated this year with approximately 1,200 high school students from around the world gathering in Portland, Oregon for a week to display their projects, associate with Nobel prize winning scientists, meet their counterparts from other parts of the world, and generally have a great time. Leading up to this pinnacle of teen research and exploration are a series of local and regional Fairs from which the best projects are invited to advance to the next level. I had the fortunate experience this year of acting as a judge at the local, regional, and international fairs, and would like to share some of that experience with you.

The Local Fair

The Beaverton/Hillsboro Science Expo was held on the Intel campus in Hillsboro on March 3, 2004. Students from grades 7 - 12 at schools in the area plus home schoolers from that area were eligible to compete.

This is the level of science fair you may remember from your own pre-college days: volcanoes, consumer product testing, and things that fly, crash, and explode (especially popular with middle-school boys). Since I was judging Middle School Physics entrants, the projects I saw tended to be of the fly-crash-explode variety.

After a brief judge's orientation, I spent an hour and a half in the morning, reviewing exhibits in my category without students present. This gave me a chance to examine the project display, apparatus, and experimental notebook in some detail.

After lunch, I spent a couple more hours visiting the entries assigned to me, and discussing the projects with the student entrants. The judges then re-grouped by categories in a separate area to compare notes and decide which entries might deserve awards. We then had a chance to visit the contenders one more time before making the award decisions.

Winners at this level were awarded modest prizes, and planned to move on to the next level, the regional fair. For the most part, this was an opportunity for the kids to get their feet wet in the world of science fair competition.

The Regional Fair

Nearly 600 students from 35 Oregon and Washington schools participated in the Intel Northwest Science Expo, held March 21 on the campus of Portland State University.

The entrants at this level are definitely a cut above what I saw at the local level. I recognized a few of the top exhibits from the local fair, but they blended in among the best exhibits from around two states. At this level, the science was a little more sophisticated, the exhibit quality a little more professional, and the exhibitors a bit more self-assured.

The judging routine was amazingly similar. In fact, the man who led my team of judges at the local fair was in charge of all the teams of judges here, and he was relying upon a system developed over the years that seemed to work well. Once again, I had an orientation, visit without and with exhibitors, review of top contenders, and consensus meetings with the other judges in my group. This is starting to feel like a full day's work!

The winners were awarded more substantial prizes, including college scholarships and all-expense-paid trips to the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF). Unfortunately for the winners (but fortunate for the rest of us), the International Fair was being held this year in…Portland! At least, last year, it was in Cleveland, OH, home of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Next year, finalists have Phoenix, Arizona to look forward to.

The International Fair

This is the big show! Over 1,400 high school students from over 40 countries and a similar number of judges with doctoral degrees or experience levels occupied the entire Oregon Convention Center for a week-long celebration of youth and science. The week was filled with seminars, speeches by Nobel laureates, ceremonies of various kinds, and, of course, the judging of the exhibits.

There are two kinds of judges: Grand Awards Category and Special Awards. The members of the Willamette Valley Chapter who judged for the STC awards were Special Awards judges. I was a Grand Awards Judge in the Physics Category.

The Grand Awards judging process is thorough and demanding for both students and judges. Judges consider creative ability, scientific thought or engineering goals as appropriate, thoroughness, skill level, clarity, and, if it's a group entry, teamwork.

Each judge reviews about ten exhibits, and each exhibit gets reviewed at least ten times. A review consists of an examination of the exhibit without the students present plus a fifteen-minute scheduled interview with the students. Each individual judge's scores are normalized to eliminate individual bias, the normalized scores are summed and averaged for each entry, and a list of the entries, in rank order, is prepared for the assembled category judges.

Now the hard part begins for the category judges. This rank-ordered list is just the starting point for the discussions among the judges (about 50 or 60 in my category) that culminate in the awards. In the Physics Category there were 21 prizes to be awarded to the best of the approximately 70 entries in the category and, believe me, it wasn't easy. After all the negotiations and discussions, we awarded eight fourth place, six third place, four second place, two first place, and one Best of Category prizes.

The Bottom Line

I think the judges' motto tells a lot about the ISEF experience: “Pick the best, encourage the rest.” Among the eleven entrants I interviewed, at least two had built very successful and impressive projects by improving previous less successful projects. I'm sure that the encouragement they received by judges in previous years had something to do with their current success.

One theme underlies all these experiences at all levels: the kids are great! They are interesting, fun, passionate people with whom I enjoyed spending some time. I'm continually blown away by the sixteen-year-olds I meet doing doctoral-level research on a dime-store budget. As long as kids like these continue to participate in programs like this one, we certainly won't have to worry about the future of science and engineering in the world.

Author

Dick Miller has been helping people to understand complex concepts and do their jobs more effectively and efficiently since 1965. This has taken the form of teaching at all levels from Kindergarten through graduate school; designing, developing, and delivering technical documentation and training; helping to improve the usability of products, documents, and web sites; coaching and facilitating groups in problem-solving processes; facilitating access to and navigation through groups of data and information; and coaching and tutoring individuals in content areas as diverse as theory of flight, calculus, and playing the guitar. He has earned college degrees in engineering, physics, education, and business administration. For recreation, he plays Traditional Jazz (Dixieland) trombone and tuba.