Louisville Regional Science and Engineering Fair

Description

The Louisville Regional Science Fair, (LRSF) is an all-volunteer organization of scientists, engineers, teachers, and business leaders focused on recognizing and rewarding the independent research achievements of local middle and high school students from public, parochial, private, and home schools. Our organization has planned and hosted this important event for the last 49 years. It is open to Kentucky students from 13 counties surrounding Louisville.

Our student participants plan and conduct independent research experiments with the assistance of teachers or mentors. At our event the students display their results on posters and give oral presentations to judges. The judges use criteria established by our national affiliate, The Society for Science & The Public, to quantitatively ranks and select award winners. The award winners receive prizes ranging from ribbons to full college scholarships donated by U of L. Winning students and their families are honored guests at the annual banquet that closes the fair.

Our volunteers are collaborating with schools year round to increase the number of school fairs. However, participation in the school fair is not a requirement to compete in our regional fair. The LRSEF is an essential qualifying event for 6 winning student researchers to compete at the Kentucky State Science and Engineering Fair and for 2 top winners to compete at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. In 2012 we hosted 187 students and our numbers are growing.