A group of students looked on as Erika Mi, junior, and Jenna Zhang,  junior showed them their TSA project. It was a plan for vertical farming as a way to get fresh produce into urban areas.

“We came up with the contraption of a conveyor belt on the side of the building. There are crops that are attached on the sides of the conveyor belt and by the time they reach the top the are ready to be harvested,” Zhang explained.

It was at the first ever SLAM fair which was held after school in the cafeteria on May 31st. The event was organized by Isabelle Snyder, freshman, and Katie Spearly, junior.  Students could participate by presenting a project that was represented in one of the SLAM categories of Science, Language arts, arts and/or music.

“There is so much academic diversity and so many interesting projects within State High, SLAM definitely has a place here. SLAM Fair is a celebration of the talent and diversity within our school and community,” Snyder said. “As a music kid, I rarely get to see all the amazing work being done in STEM areas, and vice versa. There is so much ingenuity and creativity in our school, and SLAM gives us a chance to showcase and celebrate that.”

Other presenters were Jess Hall, junior, who is starting a Glee club next year. “Glee club is a brand new club that has not yet come into creation, but I really want it to become a thing next year and so I thought this would be good publicity for the club,” Hall said.

Other music events included performances by Alexis Pupo, sophomore, and Caitlyn Moss, sophomore.

Ben Nasal, senior, Lauren Connelly, senior and Fernando Del Castillo, senior, from the Advanced Bio Electives Research Group presented projects involving fruit flies, but revolving around different themes. The club was created at the beginning of this year, but they are getting more members next year and they knew SLAM was a good place to show the school what they did this year.

“I just think it was a cool opportunity to show what we’ve done for the past year because this group hasn’t gotten a lot of recognition yet and so a little exposure is good,” Nasal said.

Although the SLAM fair is a new event, it is gaining popularity. While State High’s many clubs are very high quality, they also don’t get to interact with other ones very much. The SLAM fair is a place for clubs to do just that.

“The idea for this event came from a leadership forum/conference Isabelle and I both attended. We were discussing ways to improve the school community with students from smaller schools, and we realized there weren’t many ways in a school our size to have full school involvement in any activity,” Spearly said. “We created the SLAM fair as a way to integrate the different clubs and departments in our school and bring them all together as we do not have many cross-disciplinary activities or events at State High.”