Léman Science Department Publishes Inaugural Issue of the Léman Science Journal

February 26, 2021

This month, the Upper School Science Department published the inaugural issue of the Léman Manhattan Science Journal. We sat down with student editor, 11th grader Anna Eisenburg to learn more about the writing and editing process and her ambitions for the Journal going forward.

How did you get involved with the Science Journal? 

(Upper School Science Department Chair) Mr. Bonnar announced that we would be publishing the journal this year. Some of my science teachers reached out to the students to ask for contributions. I expressed my interest to Mr. Bonnar, and he gave me the editor role. 

How did you come up with the topic for your article? 

My article is called, “The Science Behind Life-Threatening Allergies.” I have allergies myself and I think it's important to bring awareness and put light on the subject. I know a lot of people who want to go into medicine either want to do family medicine or surgery. They don't typically think about allergies. I’d like to inspire some people to go into the allergy field.

How did you research your article? 

Last summer I attended a class on the top five most deadly diseases at the Summer@Brown precollege program and the summer before I attended a program at American University in forensic science where we talked about deaths from anaphylactic reactions, so both of those classes piqued my interest and gave me a place to start. When I was writing the article, I did some research on government websites and read scientific articles about possible treatments and clinical trials. 

What was the process of putting the journal together like? 

I spoke with other students in my science classes and recruited many of them to contribute. Once we had enough writers, we gave them a few months to write their first draft. Then Mr. Bonner and I edited those drafts and sent them back for comments. We did one more round of editing and then finalized the project. 

Editing them was interesting but challenging. Some of them were based on very complex ideas, so I had to do some additional research to fully grasp what students were saying. Once I had that basic knowledge, it wasn’t as difficult. I think all the authors wrote their articles well and tried to make them interpretable for an audience who may not be familiar with the subject. 

What are your ambitions for the Science Journal going forward? 

I’d like to bring in some new contributors for the next issue. A lot of students are busy with the IB right now, but this gives them an opportunity to gain more CAS hours and it looks great on their college application, so I’m hoping that more students will want to get involved. Because we are publishing it twice a year, students have the flexibility to write on their own time and not add to their workload.