Northeast Indiana
Regional Science and Engineering Fair 

Serving students in Allen, Whitley, Miami, Adams, Kosciusko, Huntington, Wells, and Wabash Counties

Follow us on TwitterTwitter @NEIRSEF

Thank you to our Regional Fair sponsors!

AQUA Indiana

The Ford Family

SRC

Huntington University

Teachers

Downloads

How to Register Projects How to Access and Upload to the ePortfolio
Letter to Parents Contact Information & Media Consent
Regional Fair Schedule Campus Map
Display rules Photo Display approval form
(complete this form only if a photo of a person OTHER than the student research appears on the display)
Presentation Guide How to Create Your Presentation and Video

Grades 9-12: What do I add to my ePortfolio?
Grades 6-8: What do I add to my ePortfolio?
Grades 4-5: What do I add to my ePortfolio?
Grades K-3: What do I add to my ePortfolio?

 

New for 2021!!! Virtual Science Fair

For the 2021 Fair, we will be virtual in gather.town. A link to the practice space can be found on the main page. On the date of the Fair, students will be able to access the password-protected site. More detail to come.

Students in grades K-3 will create a short video answering six questions

Students in grades 4-12 this year will be creating

*** This page is still under construction 

Setting up a school level IRB

Each school is invited to set up their own Institutional Review Board (IRB) to handle student research projects that involve human subjects (see p. 5 of Rules for Indiana Elementary and Middle School Science Research 2019-2020 and p. 5-7 of ISEF Rules 2019-2020). All projects (grades 4-12) involving Human subjects must complete two ISEF forms (Form 4 and the Human Informed Consent Form) and must submit to review before experimentation begins.

A school IRB is required to have at least three members:

- A school administrator (preferably principal vice principal)
- A medical or mental health professional (School nurse, school psychologist, medical doctor, physician's assistant, etc.)
- An educator

NEIRSEF will maintain an IRB to review any research proposals in the event that a school does not create an IRB. NEIRSEF review will require up to 2 weeks to complete, and student research involving human subjects cannot begin until it is approved by the IRB.

Teacher Registration with SEFI

August 26, 2019 - February 21, 2020

Teachers and fair coordinators who wish to receive ongoing information about the regional fair need to register on the state Science Education Foundation of Indiana, Inc. (SEFI) website. SEFI is the organization that oversees state-wide fair guidelines and maintains consistent standards for Regional Fairs, instituting a centralized registration procedure for all fairs. SEFI also provides funding for the Indiana senior division students who advance to the International Science and Engineering Fair. All teachers who will be registering students for the regional fair in spring must be registered as a teacher on the SEFI site.

If you registered students for last year's (2020) Regional Fair, you can simply reactivate your teacher account by logging in using the email address from last year and your assigned password. If you don't have your password, click FORGET YOUR PASSWORD? and it will be emailed to you. If you forgot which email address you used, email the regional fair program assistant for that information.

If you are new to the fair, you will need to create an account and a password will be emailed to you. Please make sure you select the correct school from the drop-down list. Our regional fair is listed as Northeastern. To login or to create an account go to www.sefireg.org.

Paying for Fair Registration A $10 registration fee per project (not student) is due by Friday, February 28, 2020 at 5:00PM EST.

Payment options

Allyson Mills
2101 E. Coliseum Blvd.
Kettler Hall G-03
Fort Wayne, IN 46805

 

Rules for Permissible Projects

Teachers supervising projects in grades K-8 should refer to the Rules for Indiana Elementary and Middle School Science Research.

Teachers supervising projects in grades 9-12 should refer to the 2021 ISEF International Rules and Guidelines. Senior Division projects that involve human subjects (including anything you are testing on yourself), vertebrate animals, or potentially hazardous chemicals, activities, devices, or biological agents are required to apply for an SRC/IRB Pre-Experimentation Review BEFORE research can begin.

See the For Students information for your grade levels (4-8) (9-12) for more details on the forms students should complete.

How Many Projects May I Advance to NEIRSEF?

Junior Division (grades K-3), we strongly encourage schools to advance two students from each allowable grade. However, if you feel your best projects are from the same grade or your school does not require all grades to do projects, you may send multiple projects from a single grade (as long as you don’t exceed the total allowable entries from your type of school).

Junior Division (grades 4-8), we strongly encourage schools to advance one student from each allowable grade. However, if you feel your best projects are from the same grade or your school does not require all grades to do projects, you may send multiple projects from a single grade (as long as you don’t exceed the total allowable entries from your type of school).

Senior Division (grades 9-12), we allow you to advance up to FIVE total projects to NEIRSEF.

To summarize:

How do I add students to the system?

Once you’ve registered as a teacher, the Fair Director will need to approve you. You will receive an email notifying you that this has occurred. Then you can go to http://www.sefi.org and log in. Click on “Instructions” and it will explain how to enter your student projects.

You can click the “Add Students” breadcrumb and add the students names, grade, and project title. Click on the “Group Project Wizard” breadcrumb to create teams of students (once you’ve added them into the system). This will generate log ins for your students. Click on the “Your Students” breadcrumb to get the students’ user names and passwords.

The students will need to log in and add information from there. On their first log in, they will be asked A LOT of questions, mostly to help set up their registration and help identify which forms they will need to complete. From there, they can type in their research plan, then an abstract, then upload forms. The forms they will need to upload depend on the kind of project they are doing and in which division they are competing.

Senior Division Teachers ONLY

All Senior Division projects planning to attend the Fair will need to complete the first three ISEF forms (1, 1A, and 1B). Based on the questionnaire responses, the sefi.org web site will tell you which others you will need to fill out. Students can find these at their page or you can go to the ISEF web site.

Students can upload these forms to their account as PDFs, one at a time or the entire packet. In the past we recommended one at a time because it’s easier to see that you’ve uploaded each document. But either way will automatically trigger an email to Dr. Jaiyanth Daniel at Purdue FW. He will be the person reviewing the students’ projects to determine whether they are exempt or they need a full review of the IRB committee.

You may advance up to five projects to NEIRSEF, but you may have more than 5 that need an IRB review. That’s okay. Send as many as you have.

Important Dates for 2021 fair

September 14, 2020
- Teacher Registration opens. Register at http://www.sefi.org/register/
- SRC Pre-Experimentation Review opens.
   (Senior Division only) For projects that involve human subjects and animals

January 22, 2021
- Deadline for SRC Pre-Experimentation Review.
   (Senior Division only) For projects that involve human subjects and animals

March 5, 2021
- Teacher Registration deadline
- Student project registration deadline
 Register only the students who are advancing to NEIRSEF
   (All Divisions) On the SEFI web site, include: address, phone, grade, date of birth, project title, email, and category.
   Gender and ethnicity is optional but requested.

   (Junior Division - 6th-8th) In addition to the items above, complete the research plan and abstract
   (Senior Division) Complete the research plan and abstract and the appropriate ISEF forms. Contact us for help.

March 8, 2021
- Deadline for uploading documents to the ePortfolio (theCN.com).

March 10, 2021
- Deadline for payment of Fair project registration fees.

March 20, 2021
- Date of the 2020 Regional Fair (NEIRSEF)

March 26-27, 2021
- Hoosier Science and Engineering Fair, Virtual

May 9-14, 2021
- Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, Virtual


NEIRSEF - Celebrating 68 years in 2023

Purdue University Fort Wayne