More High Schools Creating Original Research; 3 from Kentucky

This year, 1,705 students from 487 schools in 44 states entered competition in the Intel Science Talent Search. The competition prompts hundreds of students to plunge into vanguard research. High school seniors in the United States and its territories enter the Intel with research projects often begun years earlier.

Six previous winners of the Westinghouse, as Intel was known until 1998, have gone on to win Nobel Prizes. Intel's ability to act as a springboard to young researchers is particularly important since U S colleges are producing fewer graduates willing to make the financial sacrifices required of career professionals in science.

“Not only do we have to have equity and close the famous achievement gap,” said Leon M. Lederman, a Nobel-winning physicist who is co-chairman of the Commission on 21st Century Education in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. “We also have to have innovation if we’re going to survive, so you have to nurture the gifted kids.”

The contest, which began in 1941, has been monopolized by New York schools because it had its roots in a local science fair and a cluster of New York personalities. Bronx Science and Stuyvesant eventually figured out the magical formula: Teach your kids to do research; don’t just offer cookbook experiments. Pair them with mentors at hospitals and universities, perhaps working on a small piece of the mentor’s puzzle, so the projects are more than garage-built contraptions. Assign high school teachers as enforcers to help students through rough patches and make sure they meet deadlines.

While NY schools continue to produce many of the 300 annual semifinalists, two dozen other schools — some outside the city, like Ward Melville in East Setauket, N.Y., and Paul D. Schreiber High School in Port Washington, N.Y., and some far afield, like the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy in Aurora, the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics in Durham, and Montgomery Blair in Silver Spring, Md. — regularly penetrate the Top 40.

In addition, many rural and Southern states have started high school research programs, often building dormitories to attract distant students, as part of efforts to jump-start themselves as incubators of technological innovation. The three Kentucky Semi-finalists include: Amanda Driskell (17), Ballard High School; Yi Cai (18), duPont Manual Magnet High School; and Yin Wu (17), J M Atherton High School - all in Louisville.

See the complete article in the N Y Times.