On Thursday, January 14, Bowie students were getting involved with science fair, students were getting their projects judged, while other students were judging elementary school science fair projects.

Mills elementary recently held a science fair, they needed volunteers to help with the judging so they reached out to Bowie. 36 students went to judge the science fair. There were rules that were set so that the students are able to participate in the student judging.

“If you take at least two sciences here at Bowie you can judge at the elementary schools,” aquatic science teacher Alonna Beatty said.

They are judging kids in elementary school, seeing high school students critiquing their project can inspire them to dig deeper into science.

“If you want to inspire that student, then judging at the elementary schools is also a good idea. Just judging can give them the inspiration to grow in not only science but in school and in life,” Beatty said.

Not every student at Mills participated in the science fair, but there was a great amount of students who did.

“I judged 12 projects throughout the morning and there were 50-60 projects tops in the whole science fair at Mills,” Cardenas said.

Bowie students going to elementary schools to judge their science fair is a newer tradition for students, but it is one that will hopefully continue to carry on.

“The science fair judging is a Bowie tradition that has been going on for about four years and hopefully will continue for years to come,”  Beatty said.

Since these elementary schools are feeder schools to Bowie the students that go have most likely been a student there.

“If I was not a senior this year, I would most likely do it again, but this is not my first time judging an elementary school at their science fair,” Cardenas said.

Bowie was the only high school to have students show up to judge.

“These schools have students that will most likely come to Bowie so they invite us to come and judge,” Beatty said.

Another science fair that happened on January 13 was held at Bowie, which proceeded with an awards ceremony for the science fair that was also held at Bowie on January 14.

“The science fair happens every year, after Bowie’s science fair then the students advance into the regional fair and then after that they then advance onto the international level,” Beatty said.

By winning the science fair last year, and also being a senior this year, there was some pressure to participate in the science fair for his last year in high school for Gause.

“There was pressure to continue doing it since I did it from my freshman year to my junior year. It’s my last year here so that was also some pressure as well,” Gause said. “I made 5th place in the regional fair my freshman year, didn’t place my sophomore year, and went to state my junior year.“

In regards to choosing the winners for the different categories the judges had a lot of decisions to make and even stayed after a few hours. The judges were people who volunteered their time.  They were made up of teachers, parents, and anybody else who was willing to participate.

“The judges had a tough choice.  The best of judges stayed at the school until 9:30 p.m. making the final decision.

“There were 221 projects and 70 judges from the Bowie community, ” Beatty said.

The winning project was from freshman Katelyn Dill in Jill Harding’s biology class. She is not only new to Bowie, but she is also new to Austin, she moved here during the summer.

“My science fair project this year was the effect of the distance of fertilizer on the height of triticum aestivum (wheat) Dill said. The only other science fair I have participated in was my 4th grade science fair at hidden lakes elementary in Keller Texas. They picked three winners and everybody else got a participation ribbon, I did not place in that science fair.”