Mike Wyss, Ph.D., remembers reading an article three years ago lamenting the demise of science fairs in Birmingham. Students seemed to be losing interest, and the events no longer were well attended.

Judges review a science project at the recent Central Alabama Regional Science and Engineering Fair. Almost 400 students competed in this year’s fair, up from just 80 participants four years ago.

UAB and its Center for Community Outreach and Development (CORD) assumed responsibility for the event in 2005, and the number of children, teachers and schools participating has skyrocketed.
Thirty-seven schools from 13 counties sent 396 students to compete in this year’s fair. There were 338 projects registered in the competition from children in grades 5-12.

“We have gone from being the smallest regional science fair in the state to the largest in four years,” Wyss says. “UAB is building a pipeline to science education and careers. We see kids in our fair competing at very high levels and moving on the International Science and Engineering Fair.
“This is science at work,” she says. It’s UAB faculty working with these kids and making sure they have the tools to move forward in their careers.”

Schools participating this year represented Bibb, Blount, Calhoun, Cherokee, Chilton, Cleburne, Etowah, Jefferson, St. Clair, Shelby, Talladega, Walker and Winston counties.

Sixty projects from the fair were chosen to compete at the Alabama State Science and Engineering Fair on April 3-4. Those 60 young scientists collected 102 awards, including eight first-place awards. The State Fair’s four top projects will represent Alabama at the INTEL International Fair.

Two of those projects were from the UAB-CORD Regional Fair.

The success of the fair is due in part to school recruitment, Wyss says. Jarrod Lockhart, the program coordinator for CORD’s Regional Science and Engineering Fair, travels to area schools and talks to teachers to promote science education, the regional science fair and other year-round programs CORD offers to help teachers educate their students.

“We’ve tried to be a visible face in the school systems because I want teachers to know we’re here to help them,” says Lockhart, whose participation is funded through a Science Educational Partnership Award grant from NIH’s National Center for Research Resources. “I think schools are realizing the importance of science fairs in the science-education process. When you get to college you’re doing research, but many kids don’t get exposed to that until they go to college. Now, some school systems are making the science fair a requirement and part of their curriculum. They see the importance, and they know we’re here to help.”

Answer for kudzu?
Wyss says the science fair projects range from simple (Does water in older schools contain more lead?) to the complex (Is there a way to stop the growth of kudzu?).

For example, Mason McFarland, a junior at the Jefferson County International Baccalaureate School, has found a way to suppress the growth of kudzu. The answer? Sweet potatoes.

“Mason has been involved in this project for three years and will compete in the 2009 International Science Fair,” Wyss says. “His freshman year he found that sweet potatoes inhibit the growth of nearby kudzu. The next year he learned a little more about the effects, and this year he worked with Dr. Jacqueline Nikles [associate professor of chemistry] to isolate the compound within the sweet potato that inhibits the growth. 

“It is great to see students like Mason successively conduct more sophisticated probes of a scientific question,” Wyss says. “There are many examples of kids who have exciting ideas and are able to pursue them with the help of our faculty.”

Lockhart says the best thing about the science fair is that it is the vehicle for students to take classroom theory and put it into practice.

“This gets them involved in science, taking it from classroom discussion into action,” Lockhart says.

“The students do many of the projects at home. They formulate their hypotheses and do the research to test their ideas.

“We want these kids to learn how to approach questions scientifically and have greater opportunity to explore and pursue scientific careers.”