How to Be a Judge
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 19, 2019, in the Christen Wellness Center on the Dakota Wesleyan campus in Mitchell, South Dakota.
The key word in selecting judges is “variety”. We need teachers, veterinarians, engineers, amateur scientists, doctors, nurses, weathermen, and college students. If you think that you’d like to judge our fair, we would love to have you participate.
To volunteer to become a judge, call our offices at (605) 995-2182 before mid-February 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 11:15 a.m. to noon. At noon, the students return to 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 into our “front desk” as quickly as possible. At 3:30 p.m. the judges enter the arena for the third time to face the students and present the awards.