submitted by Peter Gajda--Regional Science Fair success continues to be the norm for School District # 50 students. Queen Charlotte Secondary School grade nine students Jamie Richardson and Norma Louis managed to shine at the recent Pacific Northwest Regional Science Fair held in Smithers this past week.
Norma's project "Precipitation Down the Drain", an experiment on generating energy from rainfall, finished with a Bronze Medal in the Intermediate Division. She also won a Calderwood Realty Award for Effort and Innovation, and was a runner up for the BC Hyrdo Award. Her results this year were a pilot study, and she hopes to find support to expand her project for next year.
Jamie's project, "Waits and Measures," studied the effects on the gestation length to the birth weight of a newborn polled Hereford calf, was the big winner of the fair. She finished with a Gold Medal in the Intermediate Division. She also won the Society for Canadian Women in Science and Technology Award ($100) for being the most promising female researcher, the BC Genome Prize ($200) for outstanding work in genetics or heredity, and the BC Agriculture in the Classroom Prize ($50). Jamie was also one of five students selected from across the region to attend this years Canada Wide Science Fair, to be held in Calgary from May 10 - 18, 2003. This will be her second trip to a national fair after her gold medal performance in Saskatoon last year.
School District #50 has long been a supporter of science fairs, and plans will be underway soon to try and bring the 2004 regional fair back to the islands. This is the tenth consecutive year that a local student has been selected to compete at the national event, and Superintendent of Schools Mike Woods commented that he was excited to read of the students' accomplishments.
"This is fantastic and I appreciate everyone's contribution to the program," says Mr. Woods.