One of the many ways LPS chooses to unite our community is through our annual LPS program sticker. Every year, for the past four years, we’ve designed an official sticker that is shared out among the community. This year, however, we opted to launch a design contest where our students, who we called pre-scientists, were invited to flex their creative muscles and submit designs of their own. We had 11 submissions and our winner was an 8th grader in southern California!
Pictured here is LPS CEO Lucy’s laptop, which proudly displays all the LPS stickers over the years!
With a winning design in hand, we promptly printed 6,750 of these stickers and then mailed them off to all 46 teachers in 13 states. The plan: mail enough stickers to each school so each pre-scientist receives two. The pre-scientist keeps one then turns around and mails the second sticker to their STEM pen pal inside their next letter. In this way, we’ll get stickers out to pen pals in all 50 US states and 29 countries worldwide!
Pictured here is the winning sticker design created by Jessie, an 8th grader from Southern California.
The winning sticker was designed by Jessie, an 8th grader in Southern California. She had this to share about her design process:
“The thing that inspired my design was how letters from your pen pal can come from all over the world, and that’s also why there’s an envelope, representing the letters you’ll receive. I created my sticker on Notability, completely drawing it by hand. I want people to know that Letters to a Pre-scientist is a very interactive way to learn about different researchers and their jobs, it also shows how you can receive letters from across the globe! Something I’d like to share about my experience in the program is I learned a lot about my pen pal’s research and what they do in their field. It is a very interesting and genuine way to learn about a job you may be interested in.”
As a token of our appreciation, we gifted Jessie a t-shirt with her design on it. If you love the design, keep an eye out for some swag with the design available for purchase in the next few months!
Pictured is Jessie receiving a t-shirt with her winning design on it.
Lastly, we’d be remiss to not highlight some of our honorable mentions. A special thank you to all of our wonderful pre-scientists who participated and to our teachers who helped facilitate. Here are a few of those honorable mentions below:
*Student’s name has been changed to ensure the student’s safety.
