The South Central South Dakota Science and Engineering Fair is indebted to the services of more than 85 individuals from Mitchell and the surrounding communities.  Our greatest concern is that we have a sufficient number of judges who are willing to sacrifice a workday in order to share their scientific and engineering expertise with the young.  This year that workday is March 24, 2009, in the Christen Family Recreation and Wellness Center on the Dakota Wesleyan campus in Mitchell, South Dakota.

The key word in selecting judges is “variety”.  We’ll need a photographer to judge the Eastman Kodak award, an English professor to help us judge two writing awards, and doctors and nurses to evaluate projects in the field of medicine.  We also need teachers, retired teachers, veterinarians, engineers, amateur scientists, weathermen, and college students.  If you think that you’d like to judge our fair, we probably can use your services.

To volunteer to become a judge, call our offices at (605) 995-2182 before March, and ask for our Assistant Fair Director, Jody Strand, or our Fair Director, Dr. Michael Farney.  We’ll help you decide which awards to judge and send you any necessary information prior to Fair Day.  On Fair Day itself, come to the Christen Family Recreation and Wellness Center on the Dakota Wesleyan campus. We’ll be serving a continental breakfast beginning at 8:30 a.m. The Fair Director will brief you on your duties at about 8:45 a.m. and lead you to the judging arena where you will spend the morning in small groups, which evaluate a small subset of the total number of projects. 

A buffet lunch is served from 11:30 a.m. to noon.  At noon, the students are let into the arena so that they can stand by their projects and be interviewed.  These interviews continue until 2:30 p.m.. Awards recipients are then decided, and their names should be handed in to our “front desk” as quickly as possible.  At 3:30 p.m. the judges enter the arena for a third time to face the students and present the awards.  At 5:00 p.m., the ceremony is done.  Follow the Schedule link to learn more about the day’s events and the Rules link to read up on the details of judging the South Central Fair.