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

DATE: SATURDAY, February 4, 1995                   TAG: 9502090018
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-4   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: DUBLIN                                LENGTH: Medium

STUDENTS COMPETE TO ENTER SCIENCE, ENGINEERING FAIR

But first their science projects must take the two grand awards in the fourth annual Blue Ridge Highlands Regional Science Fair, to be held March 31 and April 1 at the New River Valley Fairgrounds near Dublin. The fair is sponsored jointly by the two community colleges.

Awards at the regional fair, not to mention those that could be won at the international fair, should tempt many science students to compete, said Donald W. Linzey, director of the science fair.

Besides competing for the top awards and Canada trip, students from schools in Bland, Carroll, Giles, Grayson, Montgomery, Pulaski, Smyth and Wythe counties and the city of Galax could win a variety of other awards and prizes given by various organizations, businesses and agencies.

New ones this year include binoculars from the Carolina Biological Supply Co., Sunday brunch for a student and parents at Mountain Lake Hotel, U.S. Savings Bonds from the Blacksburg chapter of the American Association of University Women and the local American Chemical Society chapter, and a one-year scholarship to New River Community College from its Educational Foundation.

The Todd Cassell Memorial Award, honoring a Wytheville student killed in an accident two years ago, will provide $100 bonds to first-place winner in biological and physical sciences in the fair's Junior Division (seventh and eighth grades). Bonds will also go to the sponsoring teacher of each first-place winner in each of the fair's categories.

Those categories are behavioral and social sciences, biochemistry, botany, chemistry, computer science, earth and space sciences, engineering, environmental sciences, mathematics, medicine and health, microbiology, physics, zoology and, new this year, team projects in biological and physical sciences.

The team projects allow up to three students to work together.

First-, second- and third-place awards will be given in each category. Each first-place winner will be eligible to compete in the Virginia State Science Fair.

Linzey said students from 15 high schools and 14 junior or middle schools have already entered, more than ever at this point in the fair's history.

``The fair has been growing every year. And when we get like the American Association of University Women and American Cancer Society, if they can give awards, that's neat,'' he said.

This is the first time the international fair has been held outside the United States. Linzey, in the first year of a three-year appointment to the fair's Scientific Advisory Committee, will be going to committee meetings during the international fair May 7-13.

A Blacksburg resident, Linzey is a professor of biology at Wytheville Community College.

In Ontario, the top Blue Ridge Highlands students could win one of the international grand awards, special awards provided by more than 70 scientific, engineering and government organizations, or world travel awards to events like the Nobel Prize ceremonies in Sweden, London International Youth Science Forum and others.