On Monday, April 13th, LI’s science department transformed the top floor of the Elliot Memorial Library into a labyrinth filled with posters and presenters. For more than an hour, the room was abuzz with students showing off their work, engaging with fellow students and faculty, explaining their processes to visitors against the backdrop of colorful displays illustrating a wide range of experiments.

This was not your traditional science fair, where students compete for prizes, but instead a symposium, organized around the concept of an exchange of ideas, a sharing of knowledge for the sake of it.

Science Department co-chairs Jill Nichols and Linnzi Furman organized the school’s first-ever symposium. 

“It was an event we had been planning as a department goal since last fall,” Furman explained. “It felt like an exciting way to embrace our school’s mission to incorporate productive learning into the curriculum. Jill and I wanted to give students the kinds of experiences we had in college attending symposiums where scientists and researchers put their work on display.

“The symposium is a framework used by scientists at the highest level, so adopting this format provided a built-in authentic audience for our students’ work and gave them an opportunity to take ownership of their curiosity.”

This was not the work of one or two classes. Over 160 students—including the entire 9th grade class—presented findings at this event, which took place over the school’s two lunch periods. “We thought lunchtime would be a fun way to allow as many students as possible to stop in and see what their peers had accomplished.”

With the 9th graders, it was a way for teachers to focus on the scientific method. For other classes, it gave them a chance to highlight their content and allow every teacher in the department to be involved. 

“We spent a lot of time through the first half of the semester working in our department meetings to create a common rubric for assessment and templates for how the posters would look,” Furman explained.

For 9th graders, the project was a six-week process and the focus of the curriculum. Each student had to create their own line of scientific inquiry around an area of personal interest.

“They worked from the bottom up,” Furman said. “Talking through the design process, developing study questions and hypotheses, designing a procedure to test their ideas.” 

“We encouraged them to ask questions they really wanted to know about, which made a lot of the work more personal and engaging,” Nichols added.

Students also incorporated AI into the design process. “We showed them how to use AI as a tool to evaluate their experimental process, their study controls, and their surveys and offer suggestions for improvement,” Nichols explained. “With the entire 9th grade class doing individual experiments in a limited time period, it was a useful tool for both them and myself.”

In other classes, the project took different forms. For students in 10th through 12th grade taking Honors Biology, it became an opportunity to work with University of Vermont’s BioMobile Discovery Lab on cancer research.

“UVM has been hoping to get more schools, especially in our part of the state, involved in their work, so it was the perfect chance to incorporate this into our project,” said Nichols. “We spent time with their staff in the mobile lab, learning about the equipment they use, how it’s incorporated into their research. Students also had to read a lot of related scientific articles to absorb the jargon and complex technical language.”

After spending time in the mobile lab, the students developed a hypothesis around how chemotherapy affects cells, which the UVM researchers tested for them in the lab. “The students were able to incorporate the results into their presentations,” Nichols explained. “It was a really exciting opportunity for them—to do actual research using state of the art lab equipment. Taking that work combined with their other research and making it relatable to a general audience made it feel authentic.”

The Bio Honors students didn’t just collaborate with UVM. “Students used the design program Canva to digitally layout their presentations, then worked with Mr. Auerbach in the Graphic Design department to print out their posters using the studio’s new printing equipment. The results were professional grade—it felt like work you’d see at a real conference!”

Students in Rachel Riendeau’s Applied Science class focused their poster presentations on home energy, using kits supplied by the Vermont Energy Education Program (VEEP), while Anna Saco’s Environmental Conservation and Wildlife Ecology class designed their work around Trout Unlimited’s Trout In the Classroom program. 

“It provided us with a great opportunity to research watershed health and conservation,” Saco said. “We started in January, raising trout from eggs to par-fry. The students’ symposium posters were based on findings that came from our studies. We looked at everything from water quality to in-water topography to aquatic trout habitat and macro-invertebrate food sources.”

Freshman Brooke Simpson ended up completing two posters—one for Saco’s class, which she is taking as an elective, and one for her 9th grade honors science course with Nichols. Her 9th grade project was an interesting example of how students had the option of choosing something not just from the hard sciences but from the social sciences, as well.

“I decided to explore the question of how religion relates to mental health,” Simpson explained. “I’m religious and it has helped my own mental health, so I wondered if that was true for other students. I set up a survey and analyzed the results.”

Overall, Simpson found the experience a positive one. “I really liked doing all the background research. It was nice to take a break from group work and focus on individual work, too,” she said.

Sophomore Zakary Aubin also enjoyed the process. “It reminded me a little of a science fair, but it was more informational,” he said. “There was a lot of good work on display.”

He especially enjoyed the work his Honors Biology class did with the visiting UVM team. “I really liked the hands-on aspect of it. It was fun to do real research and get to see the results, not just read about something.”

As for presenting his results to so many different visitors during the symposium itself? “I was a little nervous at first, but after a while you get used to it.”

Both Furman and Nichols were pleased with the symposium’s outcome and are already planning for next year, including a few adjustments. 

“We’re looking at surveys and feedback now to see what we want to tweak for next year,” Nichols said. “Definitely going to move it to the gym for more space. The library ended up being a bit more of a crowded venue than we anticipated.” 

Furman especially valued the faculty support. “So many of my colleagues from different departments stepped up to help assess the students, to listen to their presentations, and supply meaningful feedback and provided that authentic audience that’s so important to the process.

“We wanted this to be a celebration rather than a competition like you often see with science fairs,” she added. “It was a bit of a whirlwind but in the end it was so rewarding. Our kids made science matter for that day. It meant a lot to me as a science educator.”