Some of the brightest high school students in southeast Kansas shone at Tuesday’s “Night @ The Lab” at Allen Community College.
The event, sponsored by the University of Kansas Medical Center Area Health Education Center, allowed high-schoolers to explore connections between health and science, and then show their knowledge to the community.
Among the seven schools participating were students from Iola, Marmaton Valley and Yates Center.
Iola’s contingent featured junior Olivia Taylor, freshman Ella Taylor and Marmaton Valley sophomore Sarah Spillman. The trio are a part of the ANW Special Education Cooperative’s gifted student program, Spillman said.
Spillman and the Taylor sisters’ display detailed total disc replacement, a possible treatment for sufferers of lower back pain.
Their presentation included a model of a person’s backbone, a 3-D printer capable of creating artificial discs that would then be inserted into a person’s vertebrae and a display board consolidating reams of information into easy-to-understand summaries.
The students spent about a month organizing their information, usually cramming their work into otherwise busy schedules.
“With technology, we did a lot of our collaboration over the computer,” Spillman said.
On other occasions, Spillman commuted to Iola during her lunch hour or other spare time to ensure the project would be complete.
“We prepared pretty well in advance,” Spillman said. “We’re happy with it.”
EACH OF THE six school projects was assigned a random health-related topic.
A trio of Yates Center students — Maria Jimenez, Jordan Weseloh and ???? — for example, explained how a person’s rotator cuff works, how injuries are treated, and why those injuries are so prevalent for athletes.
“We came into it not really knowing what to expect,” Jimenez said. “As soon as we got our topic, we decided we needed to find out what a rotator cuff actually is.”
The Yates Center group, too, was happy with their work.
“Now we know what to expect next year,” Jimenez said. “This was a definite learning experience.”
Entries were judged on content (did the presentation have valuable material), collaboration (Did each team member contribute?), organization and creativity (Was the presentation organized and easy to follow?) and presentatin (Did presenters speak clearly and engage with the audience, while presenting themselves professionally?)
THREE judges each looked over the displays and interviewed the teams separately.
A display on total hip arthroscopy, created by Central Heights students Paige Stockard, Riley Roll and Olivia Stockard, was judged the winner.
Those students move on to the state competition at the KU Med Center in Kansas City Nov. 16 and 17.
