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Winter Springs High Makes Strong Showing in Seventh Annual Technical Writing Competition

The Orlando Chapter of the Society for Technical Communication (STC) honored 17 Central Florida high school students at its annual awards banquet February 25, 2003 at the Winter Park Civic Center. The keynote speaker was Dr. Suzy Behel, science instructor at Lake Brantley High School.

The high school honorees, 13 of whom were tenth graders, were the authors of the top papers in the Seventh Annual Florida High School Technical Writing Competition, sponsored by the Orlando Chapter. Winter Springs High School dominated this year's competition, capturing 11 of the 17 awards.

The top two writing contest awards went to a pair of Winter Springs sophomores, Eric First and Andrew Lai. Each received an Excellence award and a $150 cash prize. First's essay was entitled Augmented Reality: A Vision of the Future; Lai wrote on Miscommunication: The Role of Cell Cycle Regulators in the Development of Cancer.

Two more tenth graders, Bonnie Li of Lake Brantley High and Alexia Ash of Winter Springs, captured Merit awards and $75 prizes for their essays, The Science Behind Photography and The Evolution of Computer Control, respectively.

The top four papers have gone on for further judging in the annual international high school technical writing competition sponsored by STC. Results will be released in April. Historically, Central Florida students have shown well in the international competition, including a 1-3-5 finish in 2000.

In addition to the four Excellence and Merit awards, the local chapter presented six Achievement awards with $25 prizes and seven Honorable Mentions.

Four each of the Achievement awards and Honor Mentions were harvested by Winter Springs sophomores. Lauren Brinton, Paulina DelaCruz, Katherine Geisler, and Erin Ramsey took Achievements, while Meghan Falter, Ryan Harvey, Amanda Tarkowski, and Jillian Tellez won Honorable Mentions.

The other two Achievement awards went to Lake Brantley sophomore Adam Jaffe and to Matthew Sobieski, an eleventh grader at Melbourne Central Catholic. The three remaining Honorable Mentions went to Mary Robinson of Gateway High, the only ninth grader to be honored this year; to Alice Yang of Lake Mary High School, the only senior to win; and to Lake Brantley sophomore Kevin Christian.

Dr. Behel spoke on the subject of how high school instructors can leverage writing competitions and other techniques to motivate and coach their students in improving their writing ability. "Communications is an integral part of our society,” she declared. "It is the single most important asset that we have."

"The STC competition has formed the focal point for teaching technical writing at Lake Brantley," Dr. Behel went on. "Not only does it provide excellent reward incentives, it offers specific writing guidelines that are especially helpful."

Dr. Behel's students have been well represented at the annual awards presentations and have taken home 32 of 78 awards that have been bestowed since the contest's inception in 1995. Collectively, over that 7-year period, Central Florida High School students have earned $4,325 in cash prizes from STC for their writing prowess. A complete listing of the award winners, including the titles of their essays, is available at http://www.stc-orlando.org/education/highsch/allhsawards.asp.

In addition to Dr. Behel, faculty sponsors of the award winners included three Winter Springs High School instructors (Dr. Maureen Warner, Michelle Ciccarello, and Trent Daniel), along with Joy Patterson at Melbourne Central Catholic, Michelle Lux at Gateway, and Mark Schiffer at Lake Mary.

The Society for Technical Communication is the world's largest professional organization in its field with over 20,000 members in 152 chapters worldwide. STC members work as technical writers, editors, illustrators, managers, educators, translators, and other communicators who make technical information understandable and available to those who need it. Information about STC can be found at its website at www.stc.org.