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•Niceville High School’s Gifted Program is sending eight students, including Lily Suttlemyre, to present research at the NaGISA Marine Science Conference in Japan this November.
•The students, the only high schoolers invited, will present on marine diversity alongside doctorate-level scientists at Kyoto University.
•Teacher Richard Hernandez, who has led the program for 30 years, emphasizes the importance of real-world research and collaboration, preparing students for academic and scientific futures.
After an hour-long interview, the four of us, Gifted Program teacher Richard Hernandez, high school senior Lily Suttlemyre, myself and Okaloosa County School District Public Information Officer Catherine Card talk about the Hurricane approaching the Florida Gulf Coast, Helene.
Suttlemyre’s one of the most intelligent and driven students at Niceville High School.
She has great grades and serves as a leader in the gifted program. She hopes one day to work as a physician and a top-flight researcher.
But, like every other kid in the school – her mind can wander to the gathering storm. Hurricane Helene could, after all, have a significant potential effect on the coming weekend’s social activities. “I’m gonna be so mad if this storm ruins homecoming,” she says aloud as she reviews the storm’s track on her phone.
Almost every student wants to avoid tropical weather, gifted program or no. But, Suttlemyre is exceptional in (at least) one particular way: she’ll be among the eight students from the only high school in the world that will send representatives to the NaGISA Marine Science Conference in Japan this November.
The conference, which focuses on the changes in near-shore ecosystems worldwide, doesn’t just invite anyone. The eight students will be the only high schoolers to present at this conference at the Japanese equivalent of MIT, Kyoto University. Most of the other presenters are at the Doctorate level. Of the 200 Niceville High Schoolers in the Gifted Program, only eight could go – so the students had to apply and take a test on relevant knowledge about the program. Sections of the test included DNA barcoding, a section on microplastics, specimen photography, and more.
This will be the third International World Conference Niceville’s Gifted Program will attend; they started the NaGISA program more than 20 years ago.
“I think a lot of people don’t realize,” Suttlemyre said of the NaGISA program, “they think about Niceville High School – they think about the football team. I think people don’t realize that they’ve got a graduate research program in their own backyard and that there’s 100 students that go out every fall and spring and go and do research. A lot of people don’t realize that – just because, maybe, they don’t spend a lot of time at the high school, or the only thing they see is the football games. But we’re here; we’re doing some pretty cool stuff.”
No matter how advanced in their studies the other presenters happen to be, Gifted and Talented Program leader Richard Hernandez would take his students over Ph.D students any day of the week.
“I view my students as a national commodity,” Hernandez said with a smile as he looked over at Suttlemyre, “They’re easily as valuable as a deposit of oil or uranium. They have as much to give to the country as any kind of physical resource.”
A small cohort of Gifted students comb over paperwork in the next room. The students ensure everything is ready for their trip that takes place the second week of November. Students must prepare everything, from excused absences from class to passport verification. They take care of it themselves in sessions like these.
The collaboration with the world’s best and brightest scientists began with a piece of mail. Hernandez was invited to apply for a master teacher program in the far eastern country. He was chosen and got to go. On his second journey to Japan, this time on a master teacher program, his sponsor took him to Kyoto University – where he ran into the founders of the NaGISA program at the Kyoto University Marine Research Lab.
There, he met the founder of the NaGISA project, Dr. Shirama, who invited him and his students to participate in the project. Niceville students would gain access to some of the best marine scientists in the world and NaGISA would gain valuable data about the Emerald Coast and its shoreline on a regular basis.
“Since the gifted program has got a lot of flexibility, we’re perfect for this,” said Hernandez, “We decided to make it a part of the curriculum because it takes a lot of problem solving, research, doing presentations – all the things we do in the gifted program is something you would be doing for the NaGISA project. So, we’re just using it as another component.”
Niceville’s Gifted Program focuses on four areas the program’s leadership believes are successful for students’ futures: presentation (of findings), problem-solving, research, and how to work as a team.
“It sounds simplistic,” Hernandez noted, “but you start off with the very basics.”
It’s a program that Hernandez intends to continue leading for as long as he can. “one of the projects is to plan Hernandez’s funeral,” Suttlemyre tells me with a grin. For Hernandez’s part – he says dying in the building wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. He says that as long as he has the mental faculty to do it, the 73-year-old who’s led the program for 30 years plans to continue.
Niceville High School hosts the Okaloosa County School District’s only Gifted and Talented Program. The 200 or so students in the program, that’s about 1 in 10 students at the school, must score above 127 on an administered IQ test to enter into the program. That number puts students in the program in the top three percent of the world in terms of their raw intelligence.
Once in high school, the students participate in a roadmap of projects. Everything from starting a business, to an externship and making a movie get covered in the class.
The science portion of the Gifted and Talented Program works with the NaGISA (Natural Geography In-Shore Areas) project. The worldwide project, started by the University of Kyoto is a global marine diversity study of the world’s coastline.
To participate, students follow what they call ‘the protocol,’ which basically outlines how they collect different samples from local shorelines in Okaloosa County for study and analysis both here and back at NaGISA’s study center in Japan.
For Suttlemyre, the program’s collection and research portions cemented in her mind that she will work as a practicing medical doctor, and have a research component to her work.
“I’m really interested in pursuing research in my college years,” Suttlemyre added, “being able to get exposed to the level of research [we get exposed to] as a high school student is really [an] incredible opportunity. Most students don’t get to do that. Now, I’m getting the opportunity to take that research and go to a conference, kind of a quintessential science experience, go and talk to scientists from all over the world and learn from them, and also share with them our experience. I know I have been profoundly impacted by the science outreach that NaGISA does.”
As you might imagine, buying plane tickets and accommodations for students traveling across the world to present at a Marine Science Conference ain’t cheap.
The total trip cost estimates come in at about $4,500 per person. All told, the scientists are looking at a roughly $54,000 bill. If you want to help them make it to Japan for the conference, you can donate here.
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