During the month of March, all Math and Science Academy students present their senior projects in the Schola.
According to senior project advisor, Allison Graves, these presentations mark the culmination of 140 hours of work that seniors complete under her supervision.
“I think the most important part of the project is that seniors develop executive functioning skills, like organizational and time management, professional communication skills, like emailing professionals, presenting their work, and soft skills, like resilience and self-advocacy. I think the most important part is that they’re growing into their young, professional selves,” said Graves.
A senior project results in either a career exploration followed by a product that showcases what a student learned or results in academic research followed by an experimental design project testing a hypothesis.
“My favorite part of shadowing were patient evaluations. They occurred multiple times throughout a patient’s visit. However, the most important one happened to be on the patient’s first day of physical therapy. During the first evaluation, the physical therapist would learn about the patient’s medical history and the type of pain that they were experiencing,” said senior Kaitlyn Hertz.
Kaitlyn presented a project titled, “Pain Means No Gain,” where she shared her experiences shadowing a physical therapist, the research process, and her encounters when operating an Instagram page. The Instagram provided tips and information on injuries, pain, etc.
“I think the best part was working with others in the lab; there were elementary students in the lab, but there were also some kids from other schools; it was really cool working with people who had similar interests as me,” said senior Chelsea Agyei.
Chelsea also presented her project, and it was called, “Understanding and Exploring Tissue Engineering,” which talked about her experiences when she joined a summer STEM program, and applicants learned about tissue engineering.
“The mission of the MSA is that our students pursue STEM fields in the future. But beyond that, we hope they become leaders in those fields and folks who are leaders in their fields are presenters. Leaders present to board rooms, they present to teams, they might lead, they present at conferences, so the hope is that this experience gives our students a more professional setting to exercise those presentation skills, and it’s also about growth, developing those communication, executive functioning and soft skills that they’re going to need as young professionals,” said Graves.