Every year  when Greg Lopatka was at Randolph School, he would get a call from John Kent, Chairman of the Science Fair Exhibit Committee.  Now that John is retired,  Allen Nelson called and Greg said, "yes".  One of the biggest rewards is seeing former students carrying on the Randolph tradition of science excellence.
Greg has been posting CPS Science Fair Web pages since 1996.  When He retired in 2001, some of the early pages were removed from the Randolph website, so He has been posting them on his lopatka.net site. Allen had the unenviable task of trying to fill the big shoes of John Kent, but he came through with flying colors.  He used his long time experience with John to pull off this Herculean task.
Last year, the Mayor gave an inspirational speech to the stu

dents and asked the TV cameras to turn and give some air time to the students that worked for months on their projects.  He mentioned that the law breaking protesters get hours of news coverage  while these kids go unnoticed.  This year, the Mayor didn't show up and all of the TV camera crews rushed downtown to film a 5 mile per hour train wreck.  So much for giving these students their 15 minutes of fame.
Anyone that has ever tried to motivate teenagers into creating a science project knows that it helps when they get some media coverage.  It is no wonder that students feel that they have an easier time trying to get famous with sports achievements. 

Marvin and John get their orders from Allan