Statewide Science Fair Perseveres … Online

COVID-19 didn’t kill Connecticut’s annual statewide school science fair — but it did push it online, with 200 judges ​“meeting” 120 high school and middle-school student competitors’ projects on computer screens and video-managers monitoring the action from a second-floor dance studio at Quinnipiac University.

The annual competition was supposed to take place live and in person.

It turned into a science project of its own: How to keep a sprawling educational event alive in the midst of a pandemic.

The planning began this past Saturday night, when Frank LaBanca, director of the Connecticut Science and Engineering Fair, and the fair’s board were faced with a tough call.

In about 36 hours, more than 800 people were supposed to descend on the Quinnipiac recreation center for the annual fair, which LaBanca had been planning all year. And in about 12 hours, though LaBanca did not know this, Gov. Ned Lamont would announce Connecticut’s first case of coronavirus, or COVID-19.

LaBanca (pictured above) said he could not swallow canceling the fair. But with the virus rapidly spreading throughout the country, and with severe outbreaks in nearby Westchester County, it could be a bad idea to convene such a large group of people.

So, he and the board decided to move the entire operation online. He and his volunteers had 36 hours to do so before students were set to bring their posters to the field house at Quinnipiac.

He and the other volunteers who run the fair frantically began to plan. Students would have to upload their posters instead of bringing them in person. Judges would judge them from home, on their computers, rather than coming to Quinnipiac to see them in person. Finalists would interview with judges in online meetings, rather than standing in front of their posters to talk to judges as they roamed the room.

On Sunday, LaBanca began to blast out communications to the students and staff at the 131 participating schools, and to the 250 judges, reporting that the fair would be virtual.

The annual fair is open to middle school and high school students throughout the state. Students can submit original science research projects, and a team of judges evaluates them and picks finalists and winners. Some students do their research in the classroom, while others use labs at nearby universities, or use their own basements, said LaBanca.

By Monday morning, after a hectic Sunday, everything was set for students to upload their projects. Normally, students would come to Quinnipiac to set up their posters themselves. Some already had the posters online, while others had to find a way to digitize them.

Despite the last-minute changes, 578 students uploaded 452 posters by the end of the day. Six of those students go to Hamden schools: five at Sacred Heart Academy, and one at Hamden Hall. Twenty are students in New Haven at eight different schools, including the Worthington Hooker School with seven students and Celentano Biotech, Health, and Medical Magnet School with four.

Normally, on the second day of the fair, the judges would come to the field house at Quinnipiac packed with posters, and would judge them in person. But on Tuesday, they did so from the comfort of their own homes, using their own computers. Throughout the day, LaBanca and teachers throughout the state also tested the computer system they would use the following day.

Presentations On The Screen

Then, on Wednesday, came a challenge. In a non-virus year, the students would come back to Quinnipiac to stand by their posters and would give presentations directly to a few judges at a time. But because of the virus, 120 students had to make presentations to over 200 judges, and it all had to happen online.

Wednesday morning, five Quinnipiac students sat at tables set up around the edges of one half of a second-floor dance studio in the university’s athletic facility. Each one sat before a laptop whose screen was divided into little boxes that showed the initials of the viewer it represented. The fair had gotten a few extra GoToMeeting accounts for the event, so that judges all over the state could ​“meet” with students also scattered all over the state.

The room buzzed with the tinny sound of middle and high school students presenting through the airwaves on immunohistochemistry and plant-based oil-spill management. From time to time, the Quinnipiac students sitting around the tables would chime in, reading one of the questions that a remote judge had typed into the chat that appeared at the side of the screen if a judge could not ask the question directly.

Usually, those student helpers would have been carrying heavy boxes, said LaBanca, ​“but today we’re taking advantage of the fact that they’re young and good with technology.” The students had signed up to help with the physical aspects of a real-life science fair. Instead, they found themselves sitting in front of computers moderating virtual chat rooms. Some screens showed as many as 21 judges watching a single student presentation.

Freshman Bianca Ceolin said she had stayed on campus during Quinnipiac’s break, which started on Monday, because she wanted to work the fair. On Tuesday, the university announced that all classes will go online for the rest of the semester, and that students should not come back to campus after spring break. She said she would probably just go home after the fair and get a job while she does her now-online classes.

On the other side of the system that Ceolin stared at on her computer screen, students set up their posters in classrooms and gave their presentation to a screen with little boxes showing the initials of judges. Science Research Director at Greenwich High School Andrew Bramante sent LaBanca a photo Wednesday morning of the setup in his classroom (above).

On the other side of a divider, the fair volunteers sat at computers managing the back end of the event. Ernie Gagnon, who developed the software the fair uses in normal years, sat next to Michel Leask, who now runs the computer system (both pictured, below).

“I have to say, it’s gone better than I thought it would,” said Leask as she looked at her screen. As of Wednesday afternoon, the operation had mostly worked, with just one hitch: the fair organizers didn’t manage to announce the finalists until 9 p.m. on Tuesday instead of 5:30, as they had planned.

At another table, Board Chair Bob Wisner sat in front of a laptop. Wisner won the fair twice when he was in high school in Hartford in the 1950s. His seventh- and eighth-grade science teacher ran it at the time. When he won the fair his senior year of high school and went to the national fair, United Aircraft Research Laboratories offered him an internship for the following summer. He went on to study electrical engineering at the University of Connecticut, and then had a career in engineering.

In the 1970s, his middle-school science teacher invited him onto the board of the fair. He became chair of the board in 1978 and then became fair director, a role he continued until LaBanca took over two years ago.

Wisner said he had had a real concern about bringing so many people together in one large room because of the virus. He said he urged the rest of the board to make the event virtual.

Each year, the fair sends its top seven students to the International Science and Engineering Fair, which is set to take place in Anaheim, Ca. in May. Wisner said the international fair gave LaBanca a call to get his wisdom when they heard how he was running Connecticut’s fair virtually.

Now that he and his volunteers have figured out a system, LaBanca said, they’ll be able to recreate it more easily in the future. He said it has also forced teachers to be creative.

“It’s forced adults to think about how we can do teaching in a difference way,” he said.

But the innovation does take work. As volunteer Doug King put it, ​“Frank and the senior team pulled off a three-day miracle.”

After Wednesday, one more step remains: The fair will live-stream its awards ceremony on Saturday.