Back on March 22nd I blogged about Alexis Valentine’s accolade of Grand Champion, Junior Division in the 2016 Sevier County Science Fair. And she told us she would soon compete at the Regional SASEF Science Fair in Knoxville on April 5. Alexis recently reported results from that competition. She took 1st Place in Environmental Science–Way to go, Batgirl!
Hi Mr. & Mrs. Tuttle,
I did well last night at the regional science fair. My mom helped me get together all the awards so I’d get the details right. I hope you guys are having fun with the bats.
My Awards
1. 1st place in Environmental Science–award from the Leidos Corporation; received nice plaque and $752. Overall had one of the Top 2 Projects in the “Animal Science” category; received $253. Overall Top 10% of all projects in all SASEF categories; invitation to apply to compete at the Broadband Masters Competition in Silicon Valley, CA in October4. Overall 5th place in SASEF science fair–competing against all types of categories including engineering and technology; received a medal & $30**Her project was the only life science project to win at the overall level; most of the winning categories were engineering, medical, and water quality.I am very grateful for my awards but felt that animals were not really loved and that life science wasn’t really a popular category during the competition. I had a lot of people ask me about bats so I was able to tell them how important they are to us and why we need to protect them. The judges were really excited to hear about me applying for a STEM grant.Talk to you soon.Love,AlexisBatgirl
One of Alexis’ goals is to purchase her own bat detector for conducting her continued research on bats in The Great Smoky Mountain National Park. For Alexis’ backstory, you can read my blog posts (Letters from a Young Bat Scientist–No. 1 though No. 8). We hope her story will inspire other young people.