Science Teachers’ Association of New South Wales Inc.
Providing leadership and promoting excellence in science education
2017 STANSW Young Scientist Presentation Ceremony hosted by the University of Wollongong On Wednesday November 1st, the University of Wollongong hosted the STANSW Young Scientist Awards Ceremony, for the fifth consecutive year. 400 finalists and guests attended the‘ Celebration of STEM’ with a record 109 students receiving awards, 13 more than our previous best set last year. We had 57 primary and 52 secondary finalists and 58 % of all prizes were won by girls. 38 NSW schools were represented at the event with 16 DET schools, 16 Independent schools and 6 Catholic schools. 9 of these award-winning schools were regional schools.
The 2017 STANSW Young Scientist Coordinator Ann Hanna was the MC for the event and Associate Professor Rodney Vickers welcomed all visitors to the University of Wollongong. He later presented awards to our K-6 scientific investigation winners with the help of Macinley Butson, our 2016 Sebel Young Scientist of the Year.
A‘ Celebration of STEM’ A unique feature of the STANSW Young Scientist Awards has been the collaboration between the professional teacher bodies that represent STEM education in New South Wales. STANSW, IIATE and MANSW each sponsored fifteen or more K-12 awards in the respective focus area. We were also honoured to have either the president or the vice president of each association present their awards.
Largest ever Australian ISEF team announced at the Presentation Ceremony With a team project being selected as one of the two best rural projects, Sapphire Foundation agreed to increase their donation to make it possible for both team members to attend ISEF. Likewise, with a team project being selected in the top 5 projects selected by the ISEF Panel, our principal sponsor Sebel Furniture agreed to increase their level of sponsorship to make it possible to send all 5 selected projects. Consequently, our STANSW Young Scientist team for 2018 ISEF Pittsburgh is a massive 9 members and they will be joined by our rural teacher chaperone and our Year 7 / 8 Broadcom MASTERS International delegate.
2017 International Science and Engineering Fair( ISEF)
Stuart Garth
Young Scientist team have best ever performance. The STANSW Young Scientist ISEF team performed outstandingly at the 2017 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair( ISEF) held in Los Angeles, May 14-19. The all-girls team came home with USD $ 6,500 prize-money between them, three major global media reports, a few thousand pins and hosts of memories that they will cherish forever. STANSW has been sending teams to ISEF, the‘ Olympics’ of school science and engineering fairs since 1999 and this has been their best-ever performance.
Leading up to 2017 ISEF, more than 7 million high school students around the globe developed original research projects and presented their work at local, regional, state, and national competitions in a bid to compete for more than USD 5 million in awards and scholarships at ISEF, the largest secondary school science fair in the world. 1778 students from 78 countries participated at ISEF 2017, with 440( 24.7 %) winning Grand Awards, presented to 1st to 4th placegetters in each of the twenty-two categories.
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