By EVAN NEMEROFF
Of the 59 students from Long Island and 300 honorees selected throughout the country, Hewlett came away with four students — seniors Yevgeniy Yesilevskiy, Meryl Natow, Zachary Appelbaum and Traci Krasne — who were named semifinalists last Thursday.
“I am so happy for these students,” said Hewlett High School social science research advisor Pat Nardi, who advised all four honorees throughout the research process. “It’s a strange and bittersweet feeling because four students were not selected. I am truly happy for everyone for their hard work through this entire experience.”
Appelbaum was in class when the results were released, but Nardi pulled him out of class to pass along the good news. “I was shocked when I found out from Dr. Nardi that I was named a semifinalist,” Appelbaum said. “I was not expecting to win.” His project, called “Who R U? An Examination of Adolescent Text Messaging," was about the use of text messaging in high school students and the effects it has on their social skills and personality. Appelbaum learned that people with higher social skills use text messaging more often than those with lower social skills.
Other students were off school grounds when the news came out. “I was at lunch when they announced the semifinalists and I rushed back to see the results,” Krasne said. “It was exciting to see that I was named one of them.”
Krasne looked into the effect bystanders play in verbal, indirect, physical and cyber bullying through her project, entitled “To Intervene or Not to Intervene?: Adolescent Bystanders Confront the Multifaceted Nature of Bullying.” She found that adolescents were significantly more willing to intervene in cases of cyber bullying due to anonymity, rather than the other three traditional types.
“During lunch, I found out that Hewlett had some winners for the competition,” Natow said. “After learning that I was one of them, it felt good. The school had no winners last year, and I was excited to be one of four winners this year.”
Her study, entitled “A Test to Consider: Predicting Parents' Willingness to have Children Undergo Predictive Genetic Testing,” examined the willingness of parents to perform predictive genetic testing on their children, focusing on breast cancer, prostate cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. She sent out 2,178 surveys and got 851 back, but was afraid she would not get any responses.
“The surveys were sent through the mail, which meant there was no guarantee to get anything back,” Natow said. “At first I was scared, but then I kept on getting mail and felt better.”
Natow found that women are willing to test their children for traits of breast and prostate cancer, but not Alzheimer's disease. Men will test their children for all three diseases.
All four winners researched a concept pertaining to social science, which included taking surveys, making hypotheses and finding actual results that proved their hypotheses.
The main focus of Yesilevskiy’s project, entitled “The Complex and Elusive Nature of Contemporary Racism: An Experimental Study Linking Modern Racism to Correspondence Bias and Bias Blind Spot,” was to test high school students' level of prejudice through a survey of questions. “The hardest part of my research were my surveys,” Yesilevskiy said. “I was worried that people would lie, and that did happen in some cases. I had to mix the negative social stigma questions with the racism questions on the second survey so people could not detect that racism was part of the survey.”
His study found evidence that while tolerance-promoting films reduce racism in whites, they can increase intolerance in minorities. He was still compiling new information for his project just days before the due date and was amazed when he found out the good news. “It was hard to believe at first that I was selected, but then I was so excited that all the work I did culminated to this point,” he said.
Each of the semifinalists will receive a $1,000 award for their research with an additional $1,000 being given to every school for each semifinalist named in the Intel STS 2009. This award is used to further excellence in science, math, and engineering education while recognizing excellence in teaching and school support of individual student research.
Later this month, 40 of the semifinalists will be named finalists who will receive an all-expense paid trip to Washington, D.C., for the week-long competition taking place in March. Those finalists will compete for a grand prize of $100,000. Winners will be announced March 10.
Nardi is appreciative for all the help that was given to the students which helped them to succeed in the Intel competition. “The students could not have gotten this done without the support from the district, who supports the social science research program, and the school, the parents, the chair department and the rest of the teachers,” Nardi said. “I enjoyed taking the time working with these students.”
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