A science fair that represents Santa Cruz County

SANTA CRUZ — The Santa Cruz County Office of Education is planning a town-hall meeting, held virtually due to COVID-19 restrictions, to address a lack of diversity in local science fair participants.

Each year, Santa Cruz County hosts a fair, bringing together hundreds of young, bright minds to show off their science and engineering experiments. But today, as in years past, the amount of students of color who participate in the fair is disproportionate to enrollment figures in the county’s school system.

Jennifer McRae, the science coordinator for the county’s education office, will host this virtual meeting, scheduled for June 2, to brainstorm with the community on ways to bolster interest and involvement among students of color.  “We want to figure out how to cast a wider net and create a more inclusive event,” she said.

In preparation for this event, McRae investigated demographic information about students who participated in the recent science fair, held on March 9, 2020. When compared with similar information at a county level, she realized that there was a big difference — although 57% of the students attending public schools in Santa Cruz County are Hispanic, they accounted for only 15% of those who participated in the most recent fair.

Having a population of students who represent all of the different ethnicities seen across this county is important because it sets an example for all students, McRae explained. “In order to expand what science is trying to understand, we have to broaden the types of people engaged in science,” she said.

During the upcoming June meeting, McRae plans to share the data behind the disparity alongside the broader goals of the Santa Cruz County’s Office of Education. “Then I want to open up the conversation and ask the community what they think the solution is,” she said.

To encourage an equal representation across demographic groups, McRae is working with the school districts individually and encouraging this year’s students and judges to join in the conversation.

She’s also planning to offer a form that can be filled out at any time, for those who are interested in contributing but have limited access to a reliable internet connection.

At this year’s county science fair, held on March 14, more than 150 students submitted and presented their work virtually. In lieu of an in-person poster presentation, a common format for most science and engineering fairs, each student submitted pictures of their poster and a 4-minute video presenting their experiment idea, methodology, and results.

The winning experiments from this county-level fair typically move onto showcase their work at a state-level science and engineering fair, with those winners progressing onto an international fair. This year, both the state and international fairs have been cancelled due to COVID-19 restrictions, however McRae emphasized that this county-level event serves as an opportunity to create an educational and motivating experience for students throughout the community.

Zoë Cornett, a young scientist of color and fourth grade student at Landmark Elementary School, submitted a project with two of her classmates in this year’s virtual fair titled “Operation: Measure the Explosion!” Their goal with this experiment was to figure out which combination of ingredients — baking soda, vinegar, and Coca-Cola — yielded the biggest explosion.

“We all had different ideas, so we decided to do an experiment,” Cornett said. Accurately measuring the ingredients and the height of the explosion were among the more difficult challenges the team faced while executing their experiment. And typing up the materials for the presentation board, while also having to create a video recording for this year’s virtual fair also posed a challenge. “At one point we were all stressed, but then in the end it was a lot of fun,” she said.

McRae previously worked as a high school science teacher for 15 years and more recently was the STEM Director (science, technology, engineering and math) at Downtown College Prep in San Jose, a school with a 99% Latino-based student population. For the first time in the fair’s history, students were able to submit their experiment’s information in Spanish this year.

“Anyone is capable of science, it’s not determined by your race or gender. I want this fair to reflect the real face of who we are in this community,” she said.

If you go

The community forum will be held virtually on June 2, from 7 to 8 pm.

To learn more, visit the Santa Cruz County Office of Education website, https://santacruzcoe.org/