Frederiksted. May 27, 2003. For the fourth year in a row, St. Joseph High School has had a unique event take place - a science symposium. In this competition, students do a science project and then make a presentation of it on videotape. Copies are made of the tape which are sent to various professional people to be judged. This year, six judges viewed the videos and rated the participants during the week of May 19th.
The first place winner was Gianna N.M. Schjang who did research into the acidity and taste of various bottled and local waters. Winning second place was Edward J. Modeste who performed a fractional distillation of an alcohol mixture. Taking third place was Sylvia N. Connor-Navarro who isolated the DNA from chicken gizzards.
Over a hundred dollars in prizes will be awarded to the winners at the school awards ceremony in June. The video of the Symposium wiinners was shown several times on St. Croix Cable Channel 7. The science symposium was started by and is moderated by Bro.James Petrait, a science teacher at the school who received the National Presidential Award for Excellence in Science Teaching in 1995. Other high school teachers are invited to start science symposiums at their schools and then to have a territory wide wide science symposium at St. Joseph High School during the 2003-2004 school year. Contact Bro. James for more details.