Signup to Help a Student

Southern Arizona Regional Science-Engineering Fair (SARSEF) involves nearly 100,000 students from Yuma to the New Mexico border and south of Casa Grande to Mexico, and they do around 75,000 projects (including several class projects at the Kindergarten to 5th grade).  Local school fairs select about 1500 of those projects to be judged at the March SARSEF.

Some of those in the middle and high school grades attempt to do projects beyond the skills and expertise of their parents and teachers.  We have used the UA skills database to attempt to find researchers willing to provide some advice to those students.  That has been largely unsuccessful; many of those listed in that database are simply unwilling to give advice to a middle or high school student.  That is unfortunate as most of the requests for help can be handled thorough email or a phone call.  Seldom does a request for help become a true mentoring situation, but we have several of our top winners who have actually done their project in a UA researcher’s lab or field site.