By:Nick Buglione
Mathews, 17, a senior at W.T. Clarke High School, is one of 300 students nationwide who was selected from a pool of more than 1,600 high school seniors who entered the contest this year.
When she found out she was a semifinalist, Mathews was floored. "I was very surprised," she said. "I was very elated."
It's an honor she has definitely earned, according to her advanced research teacher, Carol Smyth. "She's an outstanding student," said Smyth, who also teaches Mathews' physics class. "She's amazing. She's insightful, she's hard-working."
Students who enter the Intel contest must develop an independent research project, posing a question and devising a method to answer it.
Mathews' entry, a social science project examining how people of different ethnic backgrounds view one another, took over a year to research and complete. She set out to determine whether there's a correlation between a high school's racial diversity and its students' attitudes toward various ethnic groups.
It was a timely project, considering that this year marks the 50th anniversary of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case in Topeka, Kan., which ended segregation in America's schools.
"I noticed that a lot of schools on Long Island are relatively homogeneous, so I wanted to see how that affected students," Mathews said. She devised a Power Point presentation that included pictures of Clarke High School students of different racial and ethnic backgrounds -- white, black, Asian and Asian Indian.
She then came up with a list of 22 statements that would offer insight into a student's view about those different racial groups. Students were asked to associate statements such as, "This person would be the valedictorian," and, "This person would lie to a teacher," with the pictures.
Ten schools in Nassau and Suffolk counties, of varying racial and ethnic diversities, took part in Mathews' survey.
She began analyzing the data in early fall and concluded that there was indeed a correlation between a high school's racial diversity and its students' attitudes toward racial and ethnic groups. The more diverse a school, the less biased students tended to be, and vice versa, Mathews found.
"It was an excellent project," Smyth said. "We've had other good projects, but this is right up there. I'm very proud of her."
Having worked on the project for over a year, Mathews had mixed reactions when it was all over. "It did take a lot of time, but in the end just completing the project was very rewarding," she said. "It was also a little bit sad because it had been a part of me for so long."
The project taught Mathews a lot about people, and how racial and ethnic stereotypes are still very much a part of our society. It also taught her the value of patience.
For being named a semifinalist, Mathews won $1,000 for herself and $1,000 for her school. She'll find out Jan. 29 whether she is among the 40 Intel contest finalists. Finalists will take an all-expense-paid trip to Washington, D.C., where they'll compete for $530,000 in prizes and a $100,000 scholarship.
Set to graduate this June, Mathews has been accepted to Yale, where she plans to major in politics, ethics and economics. "I think I might want to go into the field of public policy or public health," she said.
In the meantime, she remains one of Clarke's more active students. She's the president of the National Honor Society, co-president of the Science Honor Society and co-president of the Multi-Cultural Club. She also is a member of the Key Club and competes on the track team.
