7 students take top honors in psychology fair
Seven Long Island students were named best-in-category winners in this year's Long Island High School Psychology Fair. Credit: The Long Island High School Psychology Fair
Seven students were named best-in-category winners for their presentations at the 2017-18 Long Island High School Psychology Fair.
This year’s event received about 65 submissions, with the top 35 projects being invited to present in six psychology categories: biopsychology, cognitive, developmental, educational, interdisciplinary and social.
Submissions consisted of 10-minute PowerPoint presentations followed by a five-minute question-and-answer session, fair officials said.
“The quality of the research and presentations was excellent,” said Allyson Weseley, secondary research coordinator at Roslyn High School, which hosted the fair. “I received a lot of positive feedback from our very impressed group of judges.”
Best-in-category winners and their categories were: Aaron Geula, Great Neck North High School, biopsychology; Ellie Eisenberg, Roslyn High School, cognitive psychology; Johanna Kann and Mayessa Rahman, Roslyn High School, developmental psychology; Sanwood Gim, Roslyn High School, educational psychology; Julia Ruskin, Paul D. Schreiber High School in Port Washington, interdisciplinary; and Kate Weseley-Jones, North Shore High School in Glen Head, social psychology.
The fair has served as a forum for student research in psychology since 2008.
BAY SHORE
Television studio
Bay Shore High School recently held a ribbon-cutting ceremony to unveil a new television studio for use by the school’s journalism class.
The goal is to expand the school’s journalism experience beyond the written word and acknowledge that news and technology go hand in hand in the 21st century, school officials said.
Broadcast segments will be posted on a website to be launched this year that will host the school’s student newspaper, Maroon Echo. The studio’s news desk is from an ESPN set and was donated by Hofstra University.
“After spending a lot of time and effort planning and preparing, we’re extremely excited to have this new facility to expand upon our award-winning student journalism program even further,” Bay Shore Principal Robert Pashkin said.
COUNTYWIDE
MLK Day
Local schools hosted an array of inspirational activities last month honoring civil rights leader the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
In Calverton, Riley Avenue Elementary School’s kindergartners and first-graders learned about King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, which was delivered during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963. The lesson culminated with the first-graders partnering with kindergartners to read and color a story about King.
In Huntington, James H. Boyd Intermediate School in the Elwood school district held an assembly in which kids watched a video presentation on King’s impact, shared his biographical information, and recited a poem.
In Hampton Bays, the elementary school’s first-graders wrote about their dreams to make the world a better place and made paper cutouts of King.
ISLANDWIDE
Take a Duck to Class
Four Long Island students were winners in this year’s Take a Duck to Class essay contest sponsoredby the Long Island Ducks and TD Bank.
The contest, which received thousands of entries from across Long Island, asked participants to submit an essay of 250 words or less on the topic, “Who is a hero in your community and why?”
Winners were: Megan Heffernan, a third-grader at Fifth Avenue Elementary School in East Northport; Victoria Rose, a kindergartner at Fort Salonga Elementary School; Jeremy Romero, a second-grader at Flower Hill Primary School in Huntington; and Jacob Rubbo, a fifth-grader at Tamarac Elementary School in Holtsville.
The students were awarded a visit from Ducks mascot QuackerJack and a Visa gift card courtesy of TD Bank.
— Michael R. Ebert
Michael R. Ebert is an education researcher and has worked for Newsday in various capacities since 2003. He was part of an 11-person team named as 2008 Pulitzer Prize finalists for investigative coverage of the LIRR's platform safety issues.