The last three months had our summit organizing team, John ’26, Yaoyao Yuan from Shenzhen College of International Education, George and Daniel from Buckland Beach Intermediate, and I, scrambling in search of student participants and professor commenters for the International Secondary Student Econ Summit. Wherein participants submit presentations on an economic topic, received feedback from professors, and present at the summit on July 29-30th. Through this event, I aimed to promote economic study for high school students, as the subject is mainly expanded upon in collegiate education, to form relationships and learn from professors, and interact with others from diverse origins.
As many students are working on test preparation and summer projects, few committed to making a submission. Meanwhile, we emailed hundreds of professors with seldom responses. However, we continued our efforts, checking up on participants on the progress of the presentations, and updating the professors. Using the CSGC funds, we secured a zoom subscription to host the summit, and finalized the procedures. Ultimately, we received nearly twenty submissions into a plethora of subjects from four countries (U.S., China, New Zealand, Korea). Professors from Dartmouth College, Peking University, University College Dublin, Yonsei University, Harvard University, and Deerfield’s Mr. Hamilton helped us give feedback to the submitters. At the two-day summit, the students presented live, with topics like universal basic income, impact of AI on the labor market, and nuclear fusion, and had animated discussions and questions with our audience. Including all who watched it live and the recording circulated amongst participants, we had ~200 viewers. We are also sending books to presenters to further their research and learning on their topics.
This goal of benefitting others was thoroughly successful. We received almost 20 excellent student submissions that demonstrated thorough research, while many were excited to continue revising their work after receiving feedback from professors and eagerly kept in touch with them. Meanwhile, the two-day summit with ~40 participants from five regions held animated discussions that sparked new ideas and connections among the diverse body. We are very thankful for all who tuned in at the summit, and especially Professor Richard Freeman from Harvard and Mr. Richard Hubbard from Dow Jones Newswires for at the two nearly three-hour sessions, at 11pm for them; and great thanks to the support of Deerfield’s CSGC in funding and advising the project.
-Marco ’26
