Summer scholars work at Stanford

April 2024
Over thirty students and their instructors attended the sixth annual student-led Stan-X Research Conference on April 27, 2024. This 'east coast' version of the student/teacher conference was again held on the gorgeous campus of the Lawrenceville School. Another was held on the same day for several 'west coast' Stan-X schools on the Stanford campus.

The day began with a video greeting from Dr. Seung Kim (who was traveling at the time) to the attendees from participating schools: The Lawrenceville School (NJ), The Chapin School (NYC, NY), the Hotchkiss School (CT) and The Haileybury School (Hertford, United Kingdom).

Students provided oral and poster presentations about their work on generating fruit fly lines, and conferenced in breakout sessions organized by Ms. Lantz and Dr. Fox. Begun successfully in 2023, students from different schools worked in these sessions to discuss and solve challenging problems together. In attendance were officers from Experimental Science Now (ESN), including the executive director Dr. Amy Vollmer. ESN was developed to help schools start Stan-X curricula.

The engagement and energy of the students was palpable throughout the day and afterwards, and the sessions helped foster mastery of concepts and data interpretation! We are grateful to Ms. Nicole Lantz and Dr. Elizabeth Fox of Lawrenceville, who guided and organized the day. Other teachers involved were Ms. Turner and Mr. Lewis from Haileybury, and Ms. Pan from Chapin.

Later in August, teacher Christina from the Lick-Wilmerding School in San Francisco visited and joined us for dinner at our favorite local Korean restaurant. She learned about Stan-X offerings and I'm glad to say as of this writing, Lick-Wilmerding has decided to train teachers in the summer of 2025 and start a Stan-X course! They will join our other local partner schools, Lowell HS in San Francisco, and Marin Academy, as a formidable trio!