As the deadline for the Senior Project paper approaches, seniors must turn in their interview questions Tuesday.  The interviewees can be their consultant or a person of their choice who is knowledgeable about the topic.

“I plan on interviewing Mr. [Greg] Eller, the gym teacher because my paper is about sports and how advances in technology make competition unfair,” senior Austin McKeever said. “ I’m going to interview him since he has a lot of background in my topic. He coaches football, played football in college and played on the FSU basketball team, so he knows how the sports have changed over the years.”

The people chosen for the interviews cannot be family members.

“We want the students to get a true perspective from a professional that has something to do with their topic,” senior seminar teacher Amanda Kopp said. “ This way they will spend time learning how to integrate research that they actually found firsthand themselves into a formal paper.”

Seniors are required to use the interviews in their research papers.

“I plan on incorporating the interview by taking his firsthand account of what he used to compete and train and compare it to athletes of today,” McKeever said.

Kopp said conducting interviews would be useful for the students in the future.

“The students will gain a useful, real-world skill similar to that of a news reporter or really an everyday skill of being able to carry on a well- supported and informed argument,” she said.

By Erin Sheridan