Zoe Whalen, on the right, a seventh-grade student at Heuvelton Central School, recently placed first in her category at the New York State Department of Education’s Science and Technology Entry Program (STEP) statewide research conference. Whalen is pictured Jamie Bush, Clarkson chaperone. Clarkson University photo.
POTSDAM – Zoe Whalen, a seventh-grade student at Heuvelton Central School, recently placed first in her category at the New York State Department of Education’s Science and Technology Entry Program (STEP) statewide research conference. Whalen presented a study on the effects of caffeine on student mental health through the Clarkson Discovery Challenge, a part of Clarkson’s Integrated Math and Physics for Entry to Undergraduate STEM (IMPETUS) program.
Since September, a cohort of North Country students have been working on individualized research projects as part of the Clarkson Discovery Challenge. At a local competition in February, teams of students presented posters to a panel of judges with hopes of securing a spot at the STEP Statewide Student Conference. Natalie Collier, Alexis Hudson, Finnley Wagner from Carthage Central took third place with their project focusing on mechanical hardware in camera drones, second place went to Whalen for her study on the effects of caffeine on student mental health, and first place went to Nadia Atkinson and Maia Berhard for their work on applications of olfactory stimulation in student learning.
Whalen, Atkinson and Berhard spent the remaining month honing their analyses and refining their studies and then headed to Albany, NY to present their work alongside students from the roughly 50 other STEP programs across New York State. Nadia and Maia came in a very close third in their category and Whalen took home the first-place trophy in her division.
“These young scientists learn how to take a topic they are curious about and turn it into a research question. Every year that I have students…
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