8TH-GRADERS GETTING EARLY PITCH TO SIGN UP WITH GOVERNOR'S SCHOOL

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 17, 1993                   TAG: 9302170128
SECTION: CURRENT                    PAGE: NRV-6   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: DUBLIN                                LENGTH: Medium
8TH-GRADERS GETTING EARLY PITCH TO SIGN UP WITH GOVERNOR'S SCHOOL
Although only high-school juniors and seniors attend the Southwest Virginia Governor's School, the recruiting of future students starts much earlier.
So far this month, 130 eighth-graders from Pulaski, Wythe, Smyth, Bland, Carroll, Giles and Floyd counties and the city of Galax visited the regional school in Pulaski County.
Each student had a chance to attend two classes of their choice.
Those attending Margaret Duncan's biology class took part in an animal study using reptiles, arachnids, arthropods and rodents.
Bob Carlson led students in physics in building and activating a computer interface, collecting and analyzing data on Macintosh computers, and physics demonstrations including free fall and electrostatics.
Woodie McKenzie had visitors to his chemistry class construct miniature rockets and fire them off, using gases collected in chemical experiments.
Rick Fisher had math students take part in visual and mathematical presentations on two bodies in space, computer simulation of comets and the math behind their orbits, and the use of graphing calculators and computer interaction.
In computer science, Larenda Page had students produce an animation sequence cartoon using HyperCard programming language on the Macintosh.
The Governor's School serves students from each of the localities from which the eighth-grade visitors were chosen. Duncan, the school's director, said that having visitors from eighth grades in the service region is a way of planting seeds in their minds for their future in advanced mathematics, science and technology at the Governor's School when it is time for them to select their junior and senior programs.
The location of the school in this region contributes toward the goal of educational equality for students in those localities, she said, because of the unique opportunities it can offer.
Those include studies in holography, robotics, DNA extraction, recombinant DNA, aeronautics, astronomy, HyperCard programming or scripting, environmental studies, analytical chemistry, fiber optics, superconductivity, computer science with programming in Pascal, and engineering calculus.

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB