Lawrenceville Hosts Chapin and Hailebury Students for Stan-X Conference

Ellen Jordan ’26 in News | May 3, 2024

This Saturday, the Stephens House hosted 11 students visiting from the Haileybury School, a boarding and day school nestled in Hertford, England, a small town one hour north of London.

The impetus for the British students’ trans-Atlantic trip was to participate in the Stan-X Conference held on Lawrenceville’s campus this Saturday, April 27. The conference was an opportunity for students to present their genetic research on fruit flies, conducted under the guidance of Dr. Seung Kim at the Stanford School of Medicine. Students taking the same Research in Molecular Genetics (RMG) course from Haileybury, as well as the Chapin School in New York, New York, worked alongside Lawrentians to present their cumulative findings of the year.

Assistant Chair of Lawrenceville’s Science Department and Stephens’ Head of House, Nicole Lantz, emphasized the opportunities to be gained from participating in the conference. “Students get to see what it is like to be part of the larger professional scientific community … [and] work with people from other schools and use collective knowledge to solve problems. [The Conference] is also a great opportunity to learn from people who come from different backgrounds and have different ideas,” she elaborated.

Keira Lehmann ’24, a student in the RMG course at Lawrenceville, stated that the conference included multiple parts, one of which was a “challenge session.” “After we presented as groups, we were put into sessions with one student from each school and given questions to answer together,” she said.

Fellow RMG student Maddy Widener ’24 fondly reflected on the conference, saying, “Despite learning the material in different classroom settings, we came together to discuss and collaborate, drawing from our shared knowledge. It was intriguing to compare our lab setups and discoveries in fly data, as we explored the differences and similarities between our outcomes.”

While visitors from the Haileybury School were on campus primarily for the Conference, they also had the opportunity to explore the campus, see the town of Princeton, and take part in Lawrenceville’s social activities. Residents in Stephens showed Haileybury students around campus and took them to the Winter Dance Series and a “white-out” themed dance held in the Clark Music Center in collaboration with the Hun School.

“I think it is fun for Lawrenceville students to share their social lives with students from other boarding schools. [The conference] is a great way to make new friends and learn how things are done [elsewhere],” Lantz said.

Molly Hagan, one of the visitors from the Haileybury School, likewise enjoyed having the opportunity to meet Lawrenceville students and present her research at the Conference. “What was most memorable about the conference definitely was the collaborative experiences I shared with the other participants, and also meeting students from the U.S.,” Hagan stated.

After the conclusion of the Hun Dance, “Stephenites,” with the Haileybury visitors in tow, returned to the common room of Stephens for a night of playing music, foosball competitions, and socializing.

“Everyone I met from Lawrenceville was so welcoming and kind, which really complimented the experiences I had at the conference,” Hagan concluded.

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Lawrenceville Hosts Chapin and Hailebury Students for Stan-X Conference