ASMSA seniors advance in STEM competition
Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences, and the Arts seniors Will Duke and Nick Nehas were named regional finalists this week in the 2016 Siemens Competition in Mathematics, Science and Technology, the nation’s premier research competition for high school students.
Students submit innovative individual and team research projects to regional and national levels of competition every year as they vie for college scholarships of $1,000 to $100,000. More than 1,600 projects were submitted this year, and 498 students were selected as semifinalists.
Duke and Nehas were two of just three students in Arkansas recognized as semifinalists. They are the first ASMSA students recognized as regional finalists.
A select group of semifinalists are chosen to advance to one of six regional competitions to be held in November. A total of 96 regional finalists were named this week.
Duke, of Pine Bluff, and Nehas, of North Little Rock, will compete in Region 2 at the University of Texas at Austin in November. States in Region 2 include Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Wyoming and Oklahoma. They are guaranteed a scholarship of at least $1,000 for being named a regional finalist.
“Every year, I look forward to seeing whether this will be the year when we’ll see a project that will lead to developing the cure for cancer — or identify tomorrow’s coolest technology,” said David Etzwiler, CEO of the Siemens Foundation. “We congratulate the regional finalists on their accomplishments and wish them luck in the next phase of the competition.”
Winners of the regional contests earn the opportunity to compete in the national finals held at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., in December. Students will vie for $500,000 in scholarships, including two top prizes of $100,000.
The 2016 competition marks the second year in a row an ASMSA student was recogAround
nized as a semifinalists. Taryn Imamura, of Conway, was a semifinalist a year ago.
Duke and Nehas submitted a team project focused on the Coral Gardens reef in the Caribbean Sea off the coast of Belize. They conducted research on the health of the reef during an ASMSA Global Learning Program trip this summer to the Tropical Marine Research and Education Center in San Pedro, Belize.
This was the first research-related trip in ASMSA’s Global Learning Program. Previous trips were language and humanities based. Lindsey Waddell, chemistry and geoscience instructor, coordinated the trip in cooperation with a group of undergraduate students from Henderson State University in Arkadelphia.
They recorded footage of the reefs during a snorkeling trip. Duke said Coral Gardens has surprisingly healthy coral. It is located next to two marine protected areas, but is not protected itself.
Duke and Nehas used the video footage to compare the data to previous studies, as well as to two other reefs in general. The data allows them to study the reefs in the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico in a broader sense.
They said they were surprised and excited about garnering such high recognition for their project. Both received a phone call Oct. 16 to inform them they had been selected regional finalists and semifinalists.
“They left me a voicemail, but didn’t tell me I was a semifinalist,” Nehas said. “I didn’t get an answer when I called back. Then I got an email from telling me we were semifinalists. I was sitting there with my mom, and she got up and whooped and hollered.”
Duke said he let the information soak in before he told his parents. He said it was a huge relief to learn they had advanced to the next stage.
“It wasn’t anything too extravagant,” Duke said. “They were pretty happy, congratulating me.”
Waddell said Duke and Nehas had a passion to for marine biology that attracted them to the opportunity to study in Belize.
“That passion has continued to carry them through the countless hours of analyzing video footage and writing in the months since their return,” Waddell said. “While we were in Belize, I was very impressed at how naturally they took to snorkeling under what were sometimes lessthan-ideal conditions and at how quickly their field identification skills solidified.”
Waddell said she hoped the trip would influence some of the students to consider a career in marine science. Nehas said he has long thought about becoming a marine biologist and the trip confirmed bolstered the desire. Duke said he is also considering some form of marine science for a major in college.
“I had been around fish and water my entire life, but I never thought about it as a career,” Duke said. “I went on this trip and now I want to do marine science. This trip kind of changed my plans.”
The trip provided Nehas his first opportunity to travel abroad.
“It was an awesome cultural experience,” Nehas said. “You’re learning about what their daily lives entail.”
The Siemens Competition launched in 1999 and was established to increase access to higher education for students who are gifted in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. It is administered by Discovery Education and is meant to recognize and hopefully build a strong pipeline for the nation’s most promising scientists, engineers and mathematicians.