- Seneca Valley School District
- Overview
Not your average essay
When Seneca Valley Senior High School AP Chemistry Teacher Kelly Weston was a junior in high school, she won an essay contest. This win not only her inspired career but came full circle recently when the same essay contest recognized two of her current students.
Seneca Valley Juniors Sydney Thompson and Nicholas Nedzesky were both awarded an Honorable Mention in the Society for Analytical Chemists of Pittsburgh (SACP) High School Essay Contest.
Thirteen students were awarded prizes, including Miss Thompson and Mr. Nedzesky. Their recognition also included a $100 prize.
Each year, SACP hosts an essay contest that requires students to respond to a science-related prompt dealing with a current event. Schools in the Greater Pittsburgh area (39 Pennsylvania counties, 10 Ohio counties and 25 West Virginia counties) were permitted to submit no more than two student essays in the competition.
Ms. Weston selected Miss Thompson’s and Mr. Nedzesky’s essays after they chose to write to the contest prompt as part of their first quarterly assessment in AP Chemistry. The prompt was “Why does the United States have a higher Coronavirus fatality rate than other countries?” and had to be answered in 2,500 characters or less and include a list of resources.
“The really cool thing is that I also won an award in this contest when I was a junior in high school as well,” exclaimed Ms. Weston. “My prompt dates me…it was about if the United States should fund research on the human genome project. SACP also paid for my summer internship to Carnegie Science Center while I was in college. It is because of organizations like SACP that I became a chemistry teacher.”
Pictured above L-R: Sydney Thompson and Nicholas Nedzesky.