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Save the date for the Awards Luncheon being held on Saturday, July 21, 2007 at Marigold's Café. Details to follow so please watch your email.
Ah,…TO BE A SCIENTIST….. On Sat. March 10th, the Pikes Peak Regional Science Fair, sponsored by UCCS, was held at the Phil Long Expo Center and the Pikes Peak section of SWE once again participated by rewarding young women for their efforts at the Fair. SWE recognized female scientists at both the senior high and middle school levels. Award winners were Aarthi Shankar of Rampart High School and Haley Damm-Hamblin of North Middle School . The winners each received a gift certificate to Borders.
Miss Shankar produced a very practical Engineering project entitled “Predicting the Function of Newly Characterized Proteins Using Proteomics and Bioinformatics." The human body contains more than two million proteins each having different functions. To establish the function of each protein through lab work would take many years, but using publicly available software tools and data bases, Miss Shankar predicted the functions through analysis of homologs. The result of her project was to successfully identify four new characterized proteins.
Eighth grader, Miss Damm-Hamblin, presented her Physical Science project, “Who Passed the Gas?”. She analyzed the effect of temperature on the generation of methane from llama manure. Her goal was to prove that not all environments will be able to produce biogas in lieu of conventional energy methods.
The Science Fair remains a crucial outlet for young ladies to demonstrate their science capabilities and garner confidence and recognition. The total number (213) of participants continues to decline and so has the percentage of women (44%). It has been over ten years since I have seen so few young lady participants – hopefully, this year was just an anomaly. The Middle School divisions had 53% female, but the Senior High was a dismal 31%.
A special thanks to my husband, Paul, of Colo Springs Utilities, and Megan Tracy of Metso Minerals who volunteered (or were forced to volunteer) to help me judge for our awards. In general, the quality of presentations remains strong and all the young ladies we spoke to had excellent exhibits and they gave interesting and informative presentations!
Two summertime STEPS Academies to recruit middle school students into the Gateway to Technology pre-engineering program will occur from 8 am to 3 pm June 11 – 15, 2007 at Russell Middle School and North Middle School in School District 11 of Colorado Springs.
Please consider volunteering to talk to these middle school students about your engineering career. The teachers have requested that engineers talk about their engineering work for about 15 minutes and then do 15 – 20 minutes of an application or an interactive activity.
Russell Middle School, 3825 Montebello Drive West, Colorado Springs, CO 80918 (Room #52) is located northeast of North Academy Blvd. and south of Vickers Drive between North Union Blvd. and Austin Bluffs Parkway.
North Middle School, 612 East Yampa Street, Colorado Springs, CO 80903 is located two blocks south of East Uintah Street and two blocks east of North Wahsatch Avenue.
Please contact these teachers if you would like to volunteer to speak to these students:
Kurt Twining (719) 328-5274 or Adam Truex (719) 328-5275.
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