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Winter Springs High Makes Strong Showing

Society for Technical Communication Honors Local Students for Excellence in Tech Writing

Over the past 9 years, Central Florida High School students have won 122 awards and $6,800 in cash prizes in STC writing competitions.

The Orlando Chapter of the Society for Technical Communication (STC) will honor 17 Central Florida high school students for excellence in technical writing at its annual awards banquet April 26 at the Winter Park Civic Center.

The honorees, 9 of whom were tenth graders, were the authors of the top papers in the Ninth Annual Florida High School Technical Writing Competition, which drew 91 entries. Winter Springs High School dominated this year's competition, capturing 8 of the 17 awards.

Awards are offered in four categories: Distinguished ($250), Excellence ($150), Merit ($75), Achievement ($25), and Honorable Mention ($5 gift certificate). Judging was done by 25 STC members representing a cross section of the technical communicators in Central Florida and at the University of Central Florida. All entrants receive comprehensive feedback on their writing.

Winter Springs junior Andrew First and senior Andrew Lai topped the field, each winning an Excellence award. First's essay was entitled OLEDs: The Displays of the Future; Lai wrote on Epigenetics: The Hidden Potential Beyond Coding DNA. First also won an Excellence award in last year's STC international high school technical writing competition, and Lai received an Honorable Mention.

Two Honorable Mention winners from the 2004 competition, Jeremy Hsu and Travis Pillow, returned as Merit winners this year, both juniors from Winter Springs High.

The top four papers in this competition will go on for further judging in the international competition. Results will be released in May. Historically, Central Florida students have shown well at the next level, winning 11 awards over the past five years.

In addition to the two Excellence and Merit awards, the local chapter presented four Achievement awards and nine Honorable Mentions awards.

Four Achievement awards were harvested by: Jacqueline Boehme (Sophomore, Winter Springs), Nicole de Paz (Sophomore, Winter Springs), Justin Lynn (Junior, Apopka), Dahvyd Wing (Senior, Apopka).

Lake Brantley took 4 of the 9 Honorable Mentions, Winter Springs took 2, and Apopka High School and Crooms Academy of Information Technology each took 1. The recipients were sophomores Christopher Bonk, Grant Chernoby, Brennan Dobbins, Chris Lang, Davis Tiblier, Joel Weiss, junior Jason Kwong, and seniors Andy Singh and Kevin Walsh.

Faculty sponsors of the award winners included five Winter Springs instructors (Dr. Maureen Warner, Ms. Jenny Dunn, Ms. Michele Ciccarello, Mrs. Trent Daniel, and Mrs. Rosemary Roberts), Dr. Susan Behel of Lake Brantley, Mr. Kenneth Bowles of Apopka, and Ms. Becky Vanderlugt of Crooms Academy of Information Technology.

Over the 9-year life of the competition, Central Florida high school students have earned 122 awards and $6,800 in cash prizes from STC for their writing prowess. A complete listing of the award winners since the contest’s inception in 1996, including the titles of their essays, is available at http://www.stc-orlando.org/education/highsch/allhsawards.asp.

The Society for Technical Communication is the world's largest professional organization in its field with 18,000 members in more than 150 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. Information about the Orlando Chapter is available on its website at www.stc.org.