Affordable High School Projects

This summer, 30 students from Wethersfield's Silas Deane Middle School and Hartford's South Middle School will pair up in a model program to build High School Science Projects in math and science and to build bridges between the city and the suburbs. There are still spaces available in Partners in Science, but applications are due by Friday, said Susan Fennelly, a Wethersfield High School science teacher who designed the program.

"We're not looking for academic superstars," said Fennelly. "We're looking for kids who are really interested and motivated to work in High School Science Projects." Intended to become a model program for other schools in the region, Partners in Science is aimed at encouraging students of diverse backgrounds to engage in scientific inquiry and become involved in a long-term project. "We hope it will promote an understanding" between students from Hartford and students from Wethersfield, Fennelly said.

Each team will be made up of one student from South Middle and one from Silas Deane and will have an adult mentor, a volunteer from the community with expertise in some area of math or science. The volunteers include architects, engineers, photographers and television meteorologist Bruce DePriest.

The program will run from July 3 to 28 at Wethersfield High. The $150 fee per student may be offset by a partial or full scholarship. Joseph Wall, the Hartford public schools' science department chairman, said the students' proficiency and interest in specific areas will be the "common thread" among the students that makes the program a success.

"There has been an overwhelming interest" in the project at South Middle, said Wall, and he hopes it can be expanded next year.

Students will get to work in the high school's 25-station Macintosh computer lab. They will learn word processing, data collecting and data analysis skills.

They will also choose a long-term research project that will be carried out during the school year. Students will keep in touch by sending messages to each other, using computers at their respective schools.

Louisa Graver, the science and math instructional supervisor for Wethersfield schools, said she hopes the projects will be entered in the 1996 state science fair.

Also, each Friday during the program, students will spend a "day away" to view science in action at places such as the state police forensic lab and the Gait Lab at Newington Children's Hospital. The program's $14,000 cost is partially covered by donations from organization such as PIMMS, the Project to Increase Mastery in Math and Science -- a nonprofit group based at Wesleyan University; the J. Walton Bissell Foundation; Mayor Mike's Companies for Kids and the Connecticut Pre-Engineering Program.