Every fall, the HPHS Science and Technology Festival, or SciFest, hopes to inspire students to explore STEM related fields by allowing students to hear about various careers directly from professional sources.
The Science and Technology Festival, or SciFest, was held this year on Nov. 18, is an annual, one day, event during which students are allowed to sign up for a presentation of their choosing to hear about any topic in which they are interested. Students attend presentations in place of any science courses they are enrolled in.
“It encourages people to consider STEM careers. So I can encourage more people to go into engineering or science or math,” President and CEO of Zyvex John Randall, who presented at SciFest, said. “What’s really great about being an engineer, you get to make stuff that does stuff. And to me that’s incredibly satisfying and I would like to see more people doing that.”
Randall, who has been presenting at SciFest for eight years, says he returns annually in hopes of being able to inspire students to pursue science related careers, like he was inspired when choosing his career.
This year, 40 speakers were able to offer 81 different presentations to students, on topics ranging from aviation to genetics to semiconductors.
For the 40 presenters, SciFest not only involves dedicating a day to speaking to students and answering questions, but also planning out an interesting presentation. For Randall, the presentation covered innovation with semiconductors.
“This is a similar presentation I’ve given a number of other times, but it does cover a lot of the important and I think pretty remarkable things that we’ve done,” Randall said.
Throughout his presentation, Randall not only aimed to encourage students to explore STEM related careers, but also to pursue higher education in whatever area appeals to them.
“For every additional year you spend in school towards getting a degree, your life potential on average goes up by about 2 or 3%. So stay in school,” Randall said. “If you can afford college and you like college life, get the most advanced degree that you can.”
Aside from the speakers who donate their time and expertise, students and parents work both on the day of SciFest and in the months leading up to the event to put on such an elaborate day of learning.
“So the PTA plans SciFest, and we start planning in the summer before contacting speakers and making arrangements,” parent volunteer Neely Thrash said. “Our two chairs are Kimberly Slade and Michelle Vicente.”
For the PTA, this process begins by contacting sponsors to speak.
“We have a database of speakers that we access and we get input from the science teachers and parents that we know that are in the fields of science and technology. And then we also reach for the stars and some people that are famous and such, we reach out to them, hoping we might get a bite,” Thrash said.
On the actual day of SciFest, roughly 30 parents volunteer to aid in running the event, from showing speakers to classrooms to setting up a hospitality area for speakers in between presentations.
In addition to the organization of the day by the PTA, several student groups on campus work to ensure the process runs smoothly. Student ambassadors show speakers around the school, and a group of students technology aids run by campus instructional technologist Amy Brown.
“We’re kind of here for SciFest as like a fault line. So, like nothing goes terribly wrong,” junior Layton Braziel said. “So like, for example, somebody went there, they didn’t have a laptop like their presentation. They just assumed that there’d be a laptop. So our job was to get them a laptop.”
For students, SciFest is a day when they are offered the chance to learn about a myriad of different STEM related topics, and choose whichever they find the most intriguing.
“We hope to inspire students in careers in science or technology fields and just hope it’s a fun day where they learn more about different industries and job opportunities,” Thrash said.
