First Place ($1,500): The Queer Agenda

The first place winner of the 2021-2022 Caffrey Welles Fine Arts Award was Kylie Snipas for their collection of short stories “The Queer Agenda”. Their work can be found here. 

Second Place ($600): Look To the Sky

Nathan Scullion won second place with his play look to the sky. His play can be found here. 

Third Place ($300): Unfinished Work #5

Jenna Vincenti won third place for her short story “Unfinished Work #5”. Her story can be found here. 

Fourth Place ($150): Body Positivity

Cecelia Pugh and Tatayana Dates won fourth place for their project on body positivity. Their submission can be found here. 

Fifth Place ($100): The Life and Death of the Author

Michaela Barney won fifth place with her video discussing how the actions of the author can affect how their work is received. Her project can be found here. 

Participation Awards ($50): 

Earning unranked participation Awards for this year were Garret Vitali with his colored pencil illustration found here, Bianca Tlatelpa with her short horror story found here, Katrina Concepcion with her poem Bittersweet found here, Samuel Conklin for his website about train infrastructure found here, Zak Billson for their original music found here, Olivia Connell for her collection of writings found here, Ariana Sopkie for her paintings found here, Sam Ramos for their collection of poetry found here, Will Block for his writings and presentations about bitcoin found here, Tatiyana Moye for their original artwork found here, Josh Cisneros for his poetry found here, Clyde Vrhel for his original artwork found here, Alexei Lazarowicz for his original music found here, Victoria White for her poetry and original artwork found here, Chris Kopiak for his poetry found here, Theodore Brown for his block print found here, Nicholas Price for his short story found here, Allison Watkins and Zachary Myers for their Instructable, and Layla Macking for her original painting found here.

Speech Given at the Awards Ceremony: 

This was the first year that the Awards were presented at the new combined WBASD and Adam Iseman gave this speech before giving out the awards:

Hello! I’m Adam Iseman and I’m an alumnus of E. L. Meyers High School class of 2007. After Meyers I went on to get an undergraduate degree at Columbia University and a master’s degree from the University of Washington both in Electrical Engineering. Even after attending these prestigious institutions I come back to Wilkes-Barre each year to help present two awards in honor of some of the best teachers I’ve ever had. Ten years ago, we started the Butwin Elias Science and Technology Award to honor Mr. George Butwin and amazing physics teacher who retired in 2005 and Mr. Samuel Elias who is still currently inspiring students on a daily basis. Six years ago, we started the Caffrey Welles Fine Arts Award to honor Mrs. Mollie Caffrey and Mr. Kevin Welles two more awesome teachers that are still inspiring students every day. I still use the structures and methods of thought I learned from these teachers on a daily basis and I can’t imagine where I’d be in life if I didn’t have them as influences. Let’s take a moment to give a round of applause for all of the awesome teachers that we currently have here!

So the awards I’m here to present today are structured as contests where students submit either a science and technology project or an artistic project and then a panel of alumni judges vote on their favorites and whichever project gets the most votes gets higher cash prizes for placing 5th through 1st. We have received some really amazing projects over the years and I’m quite excited to see what projects we will get with even more students now that we have consolidated schools.

For all of the students that are currently here I just want to run a quick semi-scientific experiment to disprove a myth that I think is actually pretty terribly wrong and harmful. Who here hasn’t heard the phrase that our high school years are the best years of our lives? It is a trope in a bunch of different movie and TV shows and anything that tells you this is basically just lying. So, the experiment I’d like to quickly run involves all of the high school alumni in the room. Can everyone that has graduated high school at least like five years ago please raise their hands! Ok we’ve got a decent number of high school graduates here! Please keep your hands up for a bit! With your hands up I’d like you to think of your happiest memory. This could be marrying a spouse, having a child or anything that brings you lots of happiness when you think of it. Everyone have a good happy memory in mind? Ok so if your happiest memory was during high school keep your hand raised. If it was during any other time of your life lower your hand. Notice the lack of hands currently up…

Ok so we have just quickly sort of proved that high school is not the best years of your life. I like to think of high school as being the start of the journey of the rest of your life. I started messing around with robotics when I was in high school. Mr. Elias even helped me work through how to wire up the controls of one of my first science Olympiad robots and now I’m currently working on launching a robotics startup! Whatever it is that you are interested in this is just the start of your journey in it. The student that turns in a couple of different paintings for an art’s award might go on to revolutionize the art world. The student who is just starting to experiment with wiring together circuits might help make a green energy breakthrough. I’m extremely excited to see all of the awesome things that you guys go on to do on your journeys in the arts and sciences!

Now let’s get on to actually presenting these awards…

Donors Who Are Totally Awesome: 

The Iseman Foundation is funded by awesome people who give their hard earned money to help encourage kids to start their journeys in science and technology and the arts. Thank you so much to everyone that continues to support getting kids interested in starting pursuits that they will explore for the rest of their lives!