Science Day at Rowan an eye-opener for area high school students

GLASSBORO The fish were fighting themselves.

On Friday, 23 Clearview Regional High School students sat distracted in Rowan University assistant professor Matthew Bealor's laboratory in Glassboro as participants in the university's eighth annual Science Day. They were prodding tanks of betta fish on the countertops, some rapping their nets against the glass, others pressing their noses to the sides of the tanks.

After lecturing for a few minutes about the aggressive tendencies of male betta fish - which will rip one another to shreds if more than one is kept in the same tank - the professor told the visiting students they were allowed to lower their floating mirrors into the water.

At once, the battles began.

Fins stiffened as the fish took swipes and bites at their reflections, fruitlessly bounding full speed into the glass. All the while, Bealor's students noted each chomp of the teeth and flare of the gills.

"If you attend Rowan University, you'll get to do something even cooler," Bealor shouted as his visitors clamored to get to lunch. "You'll get to put the fish in the tank with a female."

Science Day, which ran from 9 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at the university Science Hall, is designed to give students the type of hands-on experience they cannot typically get in a high school classroom. Students from six high schools in South Jersey - Clearview Regional High School, Millville Senior High School, Deptford Township High School, Kingsway High School, Woodbury High School, and Buena Regional High School - attended the event.

The 22 lessons were organized into three one-hour blocks throughout the day. The 121 students were free to choose whichever lectures piqued their interests, from speeches about hydrogen fuel-cell technology to crash courses on software engineering.

"The program is also designed to get students out into a college campus setting and give them a bit of freedom," said the event's co-chair, Timothy Vaden, an assistant professor of chemistry and biology. "It's also a bit of a recruiting tool for Rowan."

Vaden said the event was funded almost entirely by Rowan's admissions office at no cost to the high school students. (The high schools are responsible for transportation.)

Professors volunteer time and classroom space, brainstorming their own lectures each year. In the event's early years, he said, it brought in 40 or 50 students.

Bealor, a professor at Rowan for the last four years, said his lesson on betta fish aggression and animal mating was designed to teach students the scientific method, first and foremost. Students were asked to hypothesize what might happen when male betta fish encounter what appears to be a rival male - in reality the fish's own reflection - in the water, and then compare the results with their hypotheses.

"People like to think that science is this really hard thing, that it's all conceptual," Bealor said. "We wanted to show them that something as simple as a pet can become a lifelong subject of study."

Kaylee Horchak and Megan Young, two juniors at Clearview High School, said they asked to attend the event because of their interest in nursing science. Though the pair said they attended the day for fun after their anatomy teacher at Clearview mentioned the event, Horchak said the day had given them a newfound appreciation for Rowan.

"I was actually really interested in coming today," she said. "I was really happy to see the betta fish. We got to extract DNA from fruits, so that was really cool, as well."

"The kids get to use things we can't ever give them," said Steve Skinner, a biology teacher at Clearview and the girls' chaperone for the day. "They get telescopes, everything."

About 1:15 p.m., students gathered around green and violet flames on the third floor of Science Hall. Assistant chemistry professor Mike Miller, a former Exxon Mobil employee, was giving his final lecture, explaining to a group of Woodbury students that different elements, like sodium and calcium, create vibrantly colored flames when ignited.

When Miller set ablaze a gas of superheated sodium, causing jets of canary-yellow flames to erupt from his lab station, the crowd cooed its approval.

"I think the visual experiments work the best," Miller said, chuckling.