Three students in Dutchess BOCES’ Plant & Animal Science program scored high in the Future Farmers of America Agriscience Fair competition held May 12-14 in Syracuse.
Megan Cowles and Chloe Salandra placed 1st and 2nd place respectively in the Plant Science category, division 5, while Karlee Bishop won 1st place in the Animal Science category, division 6. “I'm extremely proud of our students,” said Principal Nick Millas. “These accomplishments represent a culmination of their hard work in our program and the outstanding instruction from their teachers.” To prepare for the competition, the students had their research projects critiqued by industry professionals at the Career and Technical Center (CTI). Dutchess County 4H Coordinator Jane Rodd, researcher Matt Deragon, and CTI instructors asked students how they chose how students presented themselves. At the beginning of the school year, students began researching a topic they were most interested in and worked throughout the year gathering data and running trials. All of it culminated in a final research paper, poster and presentation in a science fair-like setting. The project’s goal is bigger than the topic at hand – it shows students’ ability to complete a project from start to finish, as well as take pride in the process. “It’s about the process, that they understand they can have a vision of something,” instructor Rebecca Cossa said. “They all have very different experiences with it.” Students often had to problem solve and accept failure, both valuable life skills. Cossa also finds that some want to conduct more research on their respective topic. “Many of them found that their hypothesis wasn’t proven or that they had something else happen,” Cossa said. “I keep asking them is this a one and done for you or you going to keep going?” While senior Aidan Bellanca seemed like a natural chatting with the judges, he said presenting was nerve-wracking. “You should have seen me yesterday, I was super nervous,” Bellanca said. Bellanca experimented to see if thawed out frozen ungerminated seeds grow at the same rate as fresh seeds. By the time of his second experiment, he found all his seeds sprouted a week earlier than expected. “It was pretty fun,” Bellanca said. “We get our hands dirty a lot.”