The Eastern Iowa Science and Engineering Fair is a regional science fair affiliated with the International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF). Its ISEF ID is USIA01.

The fair will be held on Saturday, March 15, 2025 at Lindale Mall in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

We use a lot of abbreviations and special words. The Glossary page has definitions for them.

Visit the Board of Directors to see EISEF’s personnel. EISEF is an entirely volunteer run organization.

During the Fair “season”, September through March, we meet on the first Thursday of every month (most of them). Our Calendar of Events shows the meeting dates for this season.

So, recently you searched for your name and found it on the EISEF website. People can go there and see what you looked like back then, the science fair project you did (that you may or may not be proud of today), and what school you attended. Now for whatever reason, you want us to erase those public records from your past.

The answer is “No”: we won’t remove your photos or any other records of you at EISEF.

Why? When you registered with EISEF, you agreed to our Privacy Policy. It clearly says that we will publish your name and photo (among other things) to our website, and that they will stay there indefinitely. There is value to EISEF in retaining the history of the science fair, and we are proud to have you as part of that history.

Acronym Name Pronunciation

EISEF Eastern Iowa Science & Engineering Fair “EE-sef”

ISEF International Science & Engineering Fair “EYE-sef”

SSTFI State Science & Technology Fair of Iowa “the State Fair” or just “State”

In each division, we present the following Class Awards:

• Class I, to the best 10% of the exhibits

• Class II, to the next 10%

• Honorable Mention, to the next 10%

• No class award for the remaining 70%

We select the best Junior exhibits as Junior Champions.

We select the best Senior exhibits as Senior Champions, who will represent us at ISEF.

We also present Participation Achievement Awards to individual students who have participated in EISEF 4, 5, 6, and 7 times.

• That’s total times — if you miss a year or more, we don’t reset the count.

• We count the year even if you receive no other award.

Oh, yes.

• EISEF presents a Class Award to the best 30% of the exhibits in each division: Class I, Class II, or Honorable Mention.

• EISEF also presents Participation Achievement Awards to students who’ve been to EISEF 4–7 times. Only seniors (grades 9–12) can qualify for these.

• Outside organizations presented 27 different Sponsored (or Special) Awards in 2019 — a pretty normal year. You can receive as many of these as you qualify for.

Complete the Student Registration Form and submit it; print the EISEF Signature Page, sign it, and have your adult sponsor also sign it.

Email your signed paperwork to EISEF by the registration deadline: February 25, 2025.

• These are the parts of the paperwork:

  • Your signed EISEF Signature Page. For EISEF junior projects, this is all the paperwork we require.

• Scan all your forms into a PDF file

• Attach the PDF file to an email and send it to us.

Complete the Student Registration Form and submit it; print the EISEF Signature Page, sign it, and have your adult sponsor.

Email your signed paperwork to EISEF by the registration deadline: February 25, 2025.

• These are the parts of the paperwork:

  • Your signed EISEF Signature Page.

  • An Abstract (for Seniors). (Note: ISEF official abstract forms are not required.)

  • All ISEF forms and certificates that are required for your experiment.

• Scan all your forms into a PDF file.

• Attach the PDF file to an email and send it to us.

What if I can’t figure out which category (biological or physical) my project belongs in?

Contact our Safety & Standards Committee (see the Contact Us page) and we’ll help you figure it out. We’ll also contact your adult sponsor if we have questions about your project.

Where do I find the paperwork required by ISEF that senior projects must submit?

On the Forms Guide.

The deadline for registering your project with EISEF is 19 days before the Fair. For the 2025 Fair, you must register no later than February 25, 2025.

Email your signed paperwork to EISEF.

• These are the parts of the paperwork:

  • All sheets of your signed EISEF Signature Page.

  • An Abstract (for Seniors). (Note: ISEF official abstract forms are not required.)

  • All ISEF forms and certificates that are required for your experiment.

• Scan all your forms into a PDF file. (Your local school, office, or copy shop may be able to help you with this.)

• Attach the file to an email and send it to student-entries@eisef.org.

What can I do if I’m late registering my project with EISEF? Will you still accept it?

The Student and Teachers page describes how to register for the Fair, including how to deal with late registrations.

Our our school science fair falls after the EISEF deadline. Can we still send our winners to EISEF?

Yes. Phone the Safety & Standards Committee at the number listed on the Contact Us page and tell us how many students you will be sending. When your fair is complete, call and tell us which students you will be sending, then quickly register those students.

Do I have to be in a qualifying Science Fair to be eligible to exhibit at EISEF?

No. We may be the first fair you attend. However, the more fairs that you attend, the better your presentation will become.

There is no one at my school to help me register with EISEF, what can I do? There are certificates and such to get signed, who will review them?

Contact our Safety & Standards Committee (see the Contact Us page) for any review of your paperwork.

In general, no news is good news. If we have questions about your project, we’ll contact your adult sponsor.

Status of Projects page lists all the project we’ve received so far and tells whether they’re Pending (no paperwork received yet) or Accepted (everything is in order).

How much does it cost to register a project at EISEF?

We charge you no fee to register, or for anything else.

There is a onflicting event (band contest, speech contest, etc.) that I should attend on Fair Day. Is there a way I can do both?

Give us a call and we’ll see if the schedules can fit together.

I need to leave the Fair before the Awards Ceremony. Can I leave early and still win awards?

Only if you tell us beforehand that you’ll be leaving.

After the Student Meeting (at 9:00 AM) return to Student Check-in and give us your name, exhibit number, reason for leaving, and approximate time. You should bring your Adult Sponsor or parent with you, so we know that they know you’re planning to leave.

If during the day an emergency forces you to leave, your Adult Sponsor should report this to Student Check-in or EISEF HQ as soon as possible.

With this information, we’ll know to save any awards you receive and mail them to you after the Fair.

If you leave without telling us, you will forfeit your awards — we won’t save them and mail them to you.

So, when you attended EISEF, a judge said they might help you in some way, for example:

• Tutor or mentor you next year.

• Act as your adult sponsor or qualified scientist next year.

• Connect you with a research internship or job at their college or company.

Now you want to check out their offer, and you want us to tell you their address.

To protect your privacy and the judges’ privacy, we don’t just hand out addresses, in either direction. We have some hoops for you to jump through to establish contact:

1. Talk about the offer with your adult sponsor. After all, they’re in charge of seeing that you do your project safely.

2. If they approve, they’ll email the EISEF judging committee on your behalf. Please identify the judge for us as best you can.

3. We’ll forward the email to the judge and tell them you’re interested.

4. If they’re still interested in working with you, they’ll email your adult sponsor to establish contact with you. If you don’t hear from them, then they’re not interested.

So, when you judged at EISEF, you met a student you want to help in some way, such as:

• Advise or tutor them, to improve their presentation at the State Fair or ISEF.

• Act as their adult sponsor or qualified scientist next year.

• Connect them with a research internship or job at your college or company.

Now you want to present your offer to them, and you need us to tell you how to contact them.

To protect your privacy and the students’ privacy, we don’t just hand out addresses, in either direction. We have some hoops for you to jump through to establish contact:

1. Email the EISEF judging committee; identify the student and spell out the help you’re offering.

2. We’ll forward your email to the student’s adult sponsor: after all, they’re in charge of the student’s safety while they do their project.

3. If the student and adult sponsor are interested in working with you, they’ll email you to establish contact. If you don’t hear from them, then they’re not interested.

How do I get to Lindale Mall in Cedar Rapids?

Here is Lindale Mall’s web site, plus a map and directions from various places in eastern Iowa.

• Lindale Mall home page

• Store directory

• Dining in and near Lindale

• Map and directions to the mall

Is there an emergency number that we can call on Fair Day to contact someone at the Mall about EISEF?

Lindale Mall Security: (319) 431–4755.

What is the overall schedule for March 15, 2025? What happens when?

You can find out on the Schedule for Fair Day page.

You should start by introducing yourself and thanking them for judging your project. At that point, the judge will probably ask you to describe your project. They will ask you questions pertaining to your project:

• Why did you decide to perform this research?

• What are your findings?

• Would you repeat the experiment, and if so, what would you change?

These are just a few of the questions the judge may ask you.

Above all, however, enjoy the experience of presenting your project to the judge. They are there to help you learn even more from your project, and to applaud your efforts of conducting scientific research.

EISEF has no dress code as such. You should wear clothes that will let people know you are a serious student and you take the competition seriously.

What’s more, people will be taking pictures all during the Fair: during the Orientation session, at the exhibits, during the Awards Ceremony. We’ll post many of these pictures to our web site, and some may even appear in your hometown newspaper. (Read our Privacy Policy.) Take a look at the pictures we’ve posted for previous Fairs. Imagine searching the web years from now and finding a picture of yourself on our web site. What would you like to see?

Yes. From 1:00 PM until 5:00 PM you should plan to spend every other half-hour at your exhibit so you can visit with potential judges. The rest of the time you can cruise the Mall. 

We don’t give you a chair until late morning for 2 reasons, both related to safety:

1. If we put chairs out before you arrive on Fair Day morning, they would be in the way while everybody is bringing in exhibits and setting them up. What’s more, some of you with tall exhibits would stand on the chairs to reach — and the chairs aren’t sturdy enough or stable enough for that.

2. It gets crowded between the rows of exhibits, just with all the people. The crowding would be much worse if you students were sitting in chairs. We distribute chairs late in the morning, after most of the judging is done, when (we hope!) the crowding is less of a problem.

So, you’ll be standing most of the morning at EISEF. Make sure to wear shoes that are made for standing.

But what if I really need a chair?

If you have a medical need for a chair, you may ask for a chair when you check in, and we’ll supply one.

We understand that EISEF makes for a long day: those of you from Jefferson and Lee counties board your buses at 6 AM and return home at nearly 11 PM. (It’s a long day for us organizers, too!)

Some of you have asked about a shorter EISEF, with judging in the early afternoon, quickly followed by the awards ceremony. For several reasons this is impractical, or impossible:

1. It would be a fair just for you junior students, grades 6–8. To select our Senior Champions, a second panel of judges interviews the top senior students a second time; these interviews take all afternoon. A shorter fair would have no time for this second round of senior interviews.

2. This shortened fair would have to lose all the non-EISEF awards. Most of these awards include certificates, printed with your name and other information. It takes us all afternoon, until 7:00 PM, to print these certificates and prepare the awards for you. A shorter fair would have no time to print these certificates.

3. Lindale Mall wouldn’t allow an afternoon-only fair. Sometimes the lines at Student Check-in grow long and block the passage. We can get away with that in the morning, before 11:00 AM when the stores open. After the stores open, we mustn’t block the passages.

In any case, we already shortened the Fair once — before you students were born. Before 1984, EISEF was a 2-day fair. We cut it to 1 day, partly because the teachers asked for a shorter fair.…

Email director@eisef.org and ask for help. We can provide insight into what it takes to hold a fair.

And here are some guides we found on the web:

• How to Organize Your First Science Fair

• 15 Basic Steps in Conducting a Successful Science Fair in School

• Science Fair Central

EISEF’s territory doesn’t include my school. Is there a fair that does?

The Western Iowa Science and Engineering Fair in Fort Dodge is the ISEF-affiliated regional fair that covers the schools and students in Iowa west of EISEF’s territory. This year’s WISEF is scheduled for March 23, 2024. For more information, visit the WISEF Facebook Page or visit the ISEF Affiliated Fairs page.

The rules for the the International Science & Engineering Fair say:

“6. Students may compete in only one Intel ISEF affiliated fair, except when proceeding to a state/national fair affiliated with the Intel ISEF from an affiliated regional fair.”

What that means to you in Iowa:

• Iowa is carved up into several regions, which don’t overlap. Each region has an ISEF-affiliated fair.

• The only regional fair we allow you to attend is your “home fair”, the one in the region where you live, unless you get special permission.

• You can also attend the State Science Fair in Ames — even if you don’t attend any regional fair.

So how do I get permission to attend EISEF instead of my home fair?

1. If you haven’t already, figure out which ISEF regional fair is your home fair. (We have a page that shows the ISEF regions in Iowa.)

2. Contact your home fair (usually, its Fair Director) and ask permission to attend EISEF instead.

3. If your home fair okays your request, they’ll tell our Fair Director about it, and include your name and contact info.

4. If our Fair Director okays your request, they’ll tell you and the other fair.

5. If we’ve okayed you, then you’ll register your project with EISEF, and show up in Cedar Rapids at 8:00 AM on March 15, 2025.

Do I have to attend and win at a regional fair (like EISEF) to register my exhibit in the State Science and Technology Fair of Iowa (SSTFI) in Ames?

No. The SSTFI has its own requirements which you must meet. Visit its website for more information.

May 10–16, 2025, in Columbus, Ohio. Visit the ISEF Website for more information.

My organization wants to help put on EISEF. What can we do?

Our Volunteers page has more information.

My organization wants to sponsor an award at EISEF. How can we do this?

Award Signup has more information.

How can I give money to EISEF?

Visit our Contributors page for more information.

No, not anymore.

You may ask, “Even if I judge a different division from my child or students?”  No, not even then.

It’s noble that you want to help us: in general, more judges make for better judging. But in the past when we’ve allowed (or asked) parents/teachers to judge, we’ve had problems:

• The appearance of favoritism or bias. Other people see you judging; they’re upset that you might be scoring your own students too well or their students too poorly. Soothing upset parents is no fun for us; and on Fair Day we don’t need the distraction — we’re busy running the Fair. And so to avoid these problems we can’t allow you to judge.

• Checking or recording scores. Your students are seniors (for example), so you think it should be okay for you to judge junior exhibits. That reasoning is sound, as far as it goes. However, we compile all the judges’ scores on wall sheets in one room; you wouldn’t be human if you weren’t tempted to peek at the senior scores, to see how your students stack up against their competition. We’ve had adult sponsors and parents succumb to the temptation before; that’s why we can’t allow you into the judges’ room, and thus can’t allow you to judge.

So, no: because you have participating students, we can’t let you judge. However, there are many other ways you can volunteer to help us, and we need your help!

Updated Background Check policies for 2025 coming soon.

People ask us a lot to move EISEF so it doesn’t collide with spring break at the local schools and colleges; many people have other plans then, so they can’t exhibit at the Fair or help us run it.

The short answer to this plea is, “Not really.” A longer answer is, “We can’t realistically move EISEF to a date that won’t fall during spring break.” Keep reading for the full details.

Dates and history

In eastern Iowa, spring break falls in the middle of March. Table 1 shows the actual or planned dates for the U of I, ISU, and 2 local public school districts.

EISEF has fallen on the 3rd Saturday of March since at least 1984, when we shortened the Fair to one day. Table 1 below shows just how perfectly this date collides with spring break each year.

Suggested alternative dates for EISEF

2nd Saturday in March

Table 1 shows that moving to this date doesn’t help much: 5 years in 6 it falls on spring break’s first weekend; only 1 year in 6 is collision-free.

1st Saturday in March or a Saturday in late February

Earlier Saturdays may not coincide with spring break; but they can be too early for our students to complete their projects and register them with us. We require them to register 3 weeks before the Fair Date: mid- to early-February with this imagined Fair Date. At that point, many students are still running their experiments and won’t be ready to register.

A later Saturday in March

This risks colliding with the State Science and Technology Fair of Iowa (SSTFI) in Ames. Here are some fun facts about its date:

• The date varies, depending on when the Hilton Coliseum at ISU is available. It’s always in late March or early April.

  • Several times, it has been the Thursday and Friday after EISEF.

• The date is always after the 3rd Saturday, so historically it doesn’t collide with EISEF.

• That’s nice essential, because EISEF (the regional fair) needs to happen before SSTFI (the state fair). Many EISEF students go on to exhibit at SSTFI: if EISEF falls after SSTFI, most students will simply give us a miss.

Conclusion

We can’t think of an alternative date that works better for our students and volunteers than the 3rd Saturday in March.

Maybe you can think of one. If so, make your case to us:

• Estimate how many students and volunteers give EISEF a miss because of spring break.

• Research what events will compete with your proposed date.

• Estimate how many students and volunteers will give EISEF a miss on your proposed date.

• Email your proposal to info@eisef.org with your supporting data.

Better yet, attend an EISEF Board meeting or two, share your proposal with us, and work with us to make it happen.