Tulane invited sixth through 12th graders from local New Orleans middle and high schools to compete in the 69th annual Greater New Orleans Science and Engineering Fair. This event, which lasted from Feb. 17 to 24, invited students to ask questions, form hypotheses, run experiments and present their findings. 

Student projects are classified into one of 15 different categories. Both the junior and senior divisions have 15 categories, with most categories overlapping between the junior and senior divisions. The winners of these divisions can be found here.  

GNOSEF is sponsored by The Joe W. and Dorothy Dorsett Brown Foundation and Tulane University School of Science and Engineering, among others.  

Project topics ranged widely, from animal and plant sciences to biomedical engineering, and students were eager to show off their work. 

Dimitrios Fronistas, a middle school student at Holy Cross School, executed a robotics project that required the use of his own 3D printer and lots of trial and error.  

“I did a 3D printed prosthetic hand, and I wanted to do perpetual motion, but that violated some laws of physics,” Fronistas said. “This was my first time coding any type of circuit board… I have learned with click and drag code, but never with a typed code.”  

Tangel Castellon is a seventh-grade science teacher at Ben Franklin Middle School who says that mentoring her students was a gratifying experience.  

“My students were very determined. They show great leadership and perseverance,” Castellon said. “They are at an age where they can be innovative, creative, find real world solutions to things that are happening, and then go on to high school and have the same experience.”  

Students from the junior division, which includes sixth through eighth grade, can add on to their projects or create new ones when they join the senior division, which includes ninth through 12th grade. From GNOSEF, 60 students are selected to go on to the Louisiana State Science and Engineering Fair, and four are selected to move directly on to the International Science and Engineering Fair, regardless of how they place at the state level.  

Michelle Sanchez, a senior professor of practice at Tulane, works as the director of the Center for K-12 STEM Education, which puts on the GNOSEF. She has been involved with GNOSEF for 13 years and has been the sole fair director for the last eight. Her work is year-round and involves much more than organizing the annual fair.  

“We do teacher workshops in the summer and the fall where I write grants to get teacher stipends, so [teacher’s] time is paid for when they come to these workshops,” Sanchez said. 

Tulane graduate and undergraduate students also help with running the fair. Specifically, Sanchez teaches two service learning courses, which help run the fair, with the undergraduate students even acting as judges for the middle school events. 

 “College students impact these young students sometimes even more than other judges because they are seen as close in age and just having gone through the same life experiences including participating in poster sessions. They are seen as near-peer mentors and young students tend to be more comfortable asking questions,” Sanchez said. 

Sanchez’s main goal for the future of GNOSEF is an increased focus on teacher’s hard work.  

“The number one goal to me is the…teachers and [promoting] appreciation for the time that they spend on this,” Sanchez said. “That has been a priority in terms of getting funding for them.”  

Hridesh Rajan, the dean of the School of Science and Engineering, helped present the awards for the fair, alongside Loyola University’s dean of the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences. 

“I am excited for students who will participate in the [ISEF] and in the Louisiana Science and Engineering Fair. It is a great honor to be selected to participate in these national and internationally competitive events,” Rajan said in a statement. 

GNOSEF saw hundreds of talented students showing off their work, and Sanchez says the event was a success. At the event, 171 awards were given to 300 participating students, and GNOSEF gives out $60,000 in prizes, grants and scholarships to winners, teachers and schools.  

“Seeing the kids as excited as they are when they win awards makes it all worthwhile,” Sanchez said. “It shows that everyone can be a winner in one sense or another.”