Students at BASIS Flagstaff presented the results of their senior research projects at the school last week, explaining the work they'd done in order to learn about their areas of interest throughout the school year.
A total of 15 students -- about half of those graduating in BASIS Flagstaff鈥檚 Class of 2025 -- completed a senior project this year.
During their last year of high school, BASIS students have the option to create a project based on a topic of their choosing involving in-depth research, hands-on learning in their school or community, and a final presentation tying the elements together and sharing what they鈥檝e learned.
BASIS Flagstaff is one of 13 BASIS schools participating in the program.
In her introduction to the first round of presentations Wednesday evening, BASIS Flagstaff's college guidance counselor, Alex Cohen-Gray, described the senior projects as 鈥渁 mini master鈥檚 thesis鈥� representing the hours of work from the students. She called this program "the pinnacle of BASIS's curriculum."
鈥淲e couldn鈥檛 be more proud of how students brought little pieces of themselves to this process,鈥� she said. "I鈥檓 so impressed; they worked so hard.鈥�
Each student who decided to do a senior project began by creating a proposal during the fall semester. During the third trimester of this school year, they developed their final projects, spending at least 10 to 15 hours a week on independent research and writing blog posts to give updates on their progress.
This is the second year that students can choose a category in which to create their project, a change designed to promote experiential learning. The project types are research, internships, creative, argumentative and historical projects. Research projects are done alongside the school鈥檚 Advanced Placement research class.
Each student had both an internal and external advisor (the student presentations were introduced by their internal advisor or Cohen-Gray) who helped them throughout their work.
The final presentations were the evenings of May 7-9, with the students explaining their process and findings to their teachers, families and peers. At the end of each 20-minute presentation, they answered questions from the audience.
Five students presented their work at Wednesday鈥檚 event, representing a range of interests and methods. All said they planned to continue to explore their topic in some way and that they would have liked to go more in-depth on some element of their project.
Mae Bradford completed an internship at the local GalaMundi Bilingual Preschool for her project, studying how different educational approaches affect bilingual language learning at a young age. She discussed misconceptions about and the benefits of bilingualism, saying she鈥檇 enjoyed comparing the different methods and working in a classroom.
Riley Brown鈥檚 project also involved an education internship, as she developed a curriculum on healthy habits for eighth graders at BASIS. She developed five lessons on how to take care of yourself, spending a week each researching sleep, eating, exercise, electronics and handwashing. In one activity, Brown had the class pass around an agar plate before leaving it alone for a week. She then used the bacteria that grew on the plate to illustrate the importance of handwashing.
The project was inspired by work in her own life to develop healthy habits, with Brown saying her goal was to make this information more engaging and accessible to younger students.
Catherine Ferkenhoff created a 36-minute documentary interviewing people about the genre of horror as a way to explore its role in American culture. After using both academic and pop cultural sources for her research, Ferkenhoff rented a space at the public library, where she decorated and lit it to film her interviews, overcoming a few technological challenges along the way.
The school hosted a screening of Ferkenhoff鈥檚 documentary at the Stargazer Collaborative Theater the evening of May 12.
Josh Nelson set out to study whether the behavioral patterns of narrow-headed garter snakes were affected by their familial relationships. He鈥檚 been interested in snakes from a young age, and he partnered with Northern Arizona University researchers on his project. They set up cameras inside a snake enclosure at the university that would begin recording in response to heat and movement.
Through reviewing and cataloguing 238 clips from more than 370 hours of footage, Nelson said his main finding from the study was that the snakes -- which are both cold-blooded and slow moving -- did not trigger the cameras on their own, meaning a different method of observation would be needed to research their behaviors.
Sam Gingold鈥檚 project was creating a 6-foot-tall sculpture representing the feeling of fear that accompanies phobias. After researching the history of phobias and different treatment methods, she sculpted a statue of a man attempting to escape a monster -- which included elements of common phobias. She spent 227 hours on the sculpture alone, using her older brother as a model for the poses.
She said the final piece, which she described as 鈥渁mazingly gross,鈥� was the biggest art project she鈥檚 made.
Gingold is also in AP Ceramics and created a related series of smaller sculptures for her final project in that class. The seven monster figures in that series are each meant to represent a specific phobia.
More information about each of this year鈥檚 projects can be found at聽.