Lucrative Science Contests Spread Throughout The U.S. To Reward The Achievements Of Young Researchers

Glamorous competitions spur American students to excel in lab work by offering big-money prizes and high-profile acclaim In March, the 53rd annual Westinghouse Science Talent Search brought 40 high school students to Washington, D.C.--all of them finalists in the venerable annual competition. The purpose of the young people's visit was twofold: to showcase all of their research achievements and to select 10 of the finalists as winners of this year's event. Leading the elite group was Forrest Anderson of Helena High School in Helena, Mont., the grand-prize winner. Anderson, whose project demonstrated a method for converting mixed plastic waste into liquid petroleum products, says he was surprised to be chosen as the best of the best. "This is the most intelligent group of students I've ever been with in my life," he says. Although he can't be sure why he was singled out, he says he suspects that the timely environmental focus and the success of his recycling process helped set him apart. Anderson's generous reward--a $40,000 scholarship as the contest winner--is representative of a happy fate that is befalling many other young researchers these days. Recently, there has been an increase in the number of high school competitions offering lucrative prizes in an attempt to inspire and cultivate the scientists of tomorrow. In many of these contests, cash prizes are given to more than just one winner. In the Westinghouse event, for example, the 39 finalists in addition to Anderson were awarded scholarships ranging from $30,000 for the second- prize winner to $1,000 for the students finishing 11th through 40th. In all, $205,000 in scholarships was awarded. "Whether they win or not, however, students who enter the Science Talent Search get a feeling of accomplishment and an experience that's more like doing research and quite exciting compared to taking science classes," says Richard Gott, a Princeton University astrophysicist and head Talent Search judge. The Talent Search, cosponsored by Pittsburgh-based Westinghouse Electric Corp. and the nonprofit Science Service Inc. of Washington, D.C., is the oldest and most prestigious of U.S. high school science competitions. The $40,000 first prize is one reason, but so are the achievements of past Talent Search winners, who have received many scientific awards; five, for example, have won the Nobel Prize. Competing Competitions In recent years, a number of other student science contests have sprung up. Many of the new competitions are vying for attention with the venerable Westinghouse contest by offering generous prizes. The NYNEX Science and Technology Awards program, whose entrants submit proposals for addressing a social or technological problem in a scientific way, is expected to announce its first winners this week. The prize package totals more than $450,000, including $210,000 in scholarships to students on winning teams. In an innovative twist, the NYNEX corporation also provides up to $250,000 in R&D funding to study the winning proposals. Universities, corporations, or other organizations will be asked to apply for the funds to study the students' ideas in a project that will involve the winning teams as interns (L. Katterman, The Scientist, Nov. 15, 1993, page 3). Other relatively new competitions include the Toshiba/National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) ExploraVision Awards, which began last year; the four-year- old Seiko Youth Challenge; and the Duracell/NSTA Scholarship Competition, in its 12th year. Teams of students in grades K-12 vie for ExploraVision Awards by describing their visions of how an existing technology might evolve during the next 20 years. The ExploraVision awards, totaling up to $160,000, are funded by New York-based Toshiba America Inc. Members of first-place teams each receive a $10,000 U.S. Savings Bond; second-place team members earn $5,000 bonds. Winners will be selected next month. The Seiko Youth Challenge offers $54,000 in scholarships and school grants to teams of high school students for proposing a solution to a local environmental problem. The Seiko Corp. of America, located in Mahwah, N.J., sponsors the competition. The Duracell competition, sponsored by the Bethel, Conn.- based battery company, provides U.S. Savings Bonds worth $90,000 to 100 high school students who invent and build a battery-powered device that is educational, useful, or entertaining. In March, the winners of the Duracell contest were announced: Tracy Phillips, an 11th-grader at Long Beach High School in New York received the $20,000 first prize for inventing an electronic wallet that reads the denominations of paper money for the blind. Phillips, 17, is the second female student to win the contest in its 12-year history. As new, big-money student competitions proliferate, the long-running International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) is working hard to keep up. The ISEF, now in its 45th year, needs only a few more corporate sponsors before its organizer, Science Service, can increase the prizes tenfold. Once the increase is instituted, first-place winners in each of the fair's 14 Grand Award categories will receive a $5,000 scholarship, up from $500. In addition, first-place students will be offered four-year tuition scholarships to the University of Alabama in this year's ISEF host city of Birmingham, says Science Service president Alfred McLaren. If fund-raising goes as planned and if every category winner accepts an Alabama scholarship, then the Grand Awards prize package will come to $750,000, up from $63,500 last year. "I think of the prize money as a `grub stake' for college," says Mc-Laren. "We hope that these awards are at the level that these kids don't also need to get a job that first year in college," enabling them to concentrate on school and adjusting to their new academic environment. Predicting Future Success Organizers of all these science competitions say they want to identify students who excel in science and to reward and encourage them to pursue science careers. The Westinghouse competition, however, is the only one to survey its alumni about their accomplishments since high school. In addition to five Nobel Prizes awarded to past Talent Search finalists, two have earned Fields Medals--the Nobel equivalent in mathematics--and nine have received prestigious MacArthur Fellowships. The National Medal of Science and Albert Lasker Medical Research Awards have also gone to past finalists, as has membership in the national academies of science and engineering. "One of the reasons the Westinghouse is able to [predict future scientific success] is that it doesn't rely on a paper-and-pencil test to identify its winners," says Robert Axelrod, a professor of political science at the University of Michigan and a 1961 Talent Search finalist. He has been recognized many times for his research into the ways that individuals, groups, or nations develop cooperative relationships; in 1987, he received a MacArthur Fellowship. Basing judgments on the students' creative work is what makes the Talent Search predictive, Axelrod believes. Knowledge is important, he says, but the best scientists are able to formulate and analyze problems and develop testable hypotheses. "The record of the Westinghouse is phenomenal," says Joseph Berger, education writer for the New York Times and author of The Young Scientists (Reading, Mass., Addison-Wesley Publishing Co. Inc., 1994), an examination of Talent Search finalists and the high schools they attended. In researching his book, Berger determined that becoming a finalist is best predicted by attendance at a high school that "teaches you how to do research, not just offers courses in science." Award-Winning Schooling The high schools that have produced the most Talent Search finalists are located in New York. Years ago, these schools- -Bronx Science, Stuyvesant, Forest Hills, Erasmus, Hall, Midwood, Jamaica, and Brooklyn Technical--began using the Talent Search to compete informally among one another by comparing who entered the most students and brought home the most prizes. As time passed, these schools boosted their prospects with a science curriculum that emphasized hands-on research experience. "Obviously, a number of kids win the Westinghouse without this experience," says Berger, "but I was struck by how many did go through one of these research programs." The record of Melanie Krieger's students at West Melville High School in Setauket, N.Y., bears out Berger's hypothesis. For the last seven years, Krieger has taught WestPrep (short for "Westinghouse Science Talent Search Preparation") as a three-year program in which students spend most of their time working on research projects to enter in a host of competitions. Since she started WestPrep, the program has produced 43 Talent Search semifinalists and five finalists, including Todd Eldad Hod and Job Thomas Rijssenbeek this year. "I have shaped the curriculum around these competitions," emphasizing research and lots of writing, she says. "I value the competitions, especially for the deadlines. If you're submitting [a National Institutes of Health] grant proposal, you don't get to miss the deadline and then give them some excuse to be considered anyway." Arthur Eisenkraft, a physics teacher and science coordinator at Fox Lane High School in Bedford, N.Y., acknowledges that many competitions identify the students most likely to become successful scientists. "But," he adds, "I don't think that's the purpose, nor is it why I'm involved." Eisenkraft has organized the U.S. Physics Olympiad team and serves as a judge for the NYNEX Awards and the Duracell contest. For him, it is more important for these programs to let the best students know how good they are. "I certainly appreciate that it's an achievement to ski down a hill four-tenths of second faster than someone " says Eisenkraft. "But that individual will have much less impact on this country than these kids [who win science competitions]. "They can have a large impact on the world, and we need to encourage them and let them know it." Patricia Powers remembers being one of only two young women taking calculus 10 years ago at Lyndon Johnson High School in Austin, Texas. In 1983, as Patricia Zoch, she was named a finalist in the Talent Search for her genetic study of crossover frequency in fruit flies. "While I was in Washington [for the final judging] I met other girls who were also interested in science, and it made me realize that I wasn't weird," says Powers. "Because of that, I continued in genetics." Today, Powers is a genetics researcher at the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research in San Antonio, Texas. Eric Miller got a similar confidence boost from his involvement in the Physics Olympiad, which brings together top students from some 40 countries to compete by solving a series of physics problems. Miller, a sophomore majoring in physics at Harvard University, was a member of the 1991 and 1992 U.S. teams, which traveled to Olympiads in Cuba and Finland, respectively. Prior to each, U.S. team members spent a week "training" in College Park, Md., attending lectures and taking practice exams. "From the training camp, I got a lot of confidence in my ability to face physics problems and solve them," he says. The Olympiad "significantly increased my interest in physics. It's a big part of why I'm a physics major now." True Rewards Despite the thousands of dollars in scholarships being doled out to winners of these science competitions, none of the people contacted for this story--competition organizers, teachers, or students--believes that the money is the primary motivation for participants. Certainly any scholarship is welcome, but it seems that the recognition gained from winning is valued more highly by the winners, and not just by those who get the top awards. For society, says Axelrod, an even greater effect of awards "is not in the dollar amount or number of fellowships. It's being identified that's important. It tells other people, in admissions offices, for example, that here is somebody quite prominent, that these are the people society ought to sponsor." Harry Kloor, codirector of the Physics Outreach Program at Purdue University, says that if there is a drawback to these competitions, it's that they appeal to students already interested enough in science to put in the time to undertake a project. Kloor and his colleagues at the Physics Outreach Program plan to address this with an essay competition for students in grades 7-12. The idea came from a 1990-92 survey by the Purdue program that asked students who or what makes science interesting. After parents and teachers, the study found that the entertainment industry--through science fiction movies, science "fact" TV shows, and even some comic books--helps stimulate curiosity. The planned contest will ask students to write an essay exploring some scientific topic raised by a movie, TV show, or comic book. "Each essay would be a lesson in science literacy and writing," says Kloor. "We don't plan to keep this 100 percent scholarly. "We want to add an element of fun, hoping to reach the 85 percent of kids who aren't participating in the high- intensity contests." Lee Katterman, a writer based in Ann Arbor, Mich., is editor of Research News, a publication of the University of Michigan.

Lucrative Science Contests Spread Throughout The U.S. To Reward The Achievements Of Young Researchers

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