About Us:

The Mastodon Fair is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization that supports K-12th grade students, teachers, and parents reach the goal of submitting creative and innovative science and art projects at the annual regional competition held each March at Jefferson College in Hillsboro, Missouri.

As the largest combined art and science fair in the United States, our mission is the promotion of art and science education through competitive events. We strive to inspire creative solutions from competing students, encouraging our students to explore the Art in science and the Science in art.

The focus of the Mastodon Fair is stability, sustainability, and impact. We hope to achieve these goals by encouraging students to enter exhibits that display creative and novel art and science in their projects.

History:

The Mastodon Fair is the largest art and science fair in the U.S., with over 3,000 K-12th grade participants from area public, private and home schools. Teachers and parents submit student art and/or science project into the professionally judged annual March Fair held out at Jefferson College in Hillsboro, where students and teachers win over $55,000 in prizes, trips, and scholarships.

History: Dorothy Boyer Heinze founded the Mastodon Art/Science Connection Fair in 1979 in conjunction with early fundraising events for the Mastodon Park, now called the Historic Site. The Mastodon Park Committee held the Fair from 1979-1993 at the Historic Site which was adequate for the 15-165 students that participated. In 1991, Eva Kirkpatrick became director of the Fair and due to the growth in participants, the Fair was moved to Jefferson College in Hillsboro. The Mastodon State Historic Site now displays winning projects for public viewing at the museum through May 1st each year. In 1992, the Fair became a 501(c)3 organization separate from the Mastodon Historic Site. We receive no state or federal funding, and all of the operating and award expenses must be raised each year. The Mastodon Park Committee continues to be a sponsor of the Fair.

After negotiations with the Greater St. Louis Fair, the Mastodon Fair received their Regional Charter on August 7, 1997. The affiliation with the Science Service in Washington, D.C. followed in September, 1997. Vera McCullough, Eva Kirkpatrick’s daughter, became director of the Fair in Spring 2000. During her directorship, the Fair integrated technology solutions enabling the processing of each of the 2000+ students in one day as well as sending the first ever observers to the International Fair. In Spring 2002, there were a total of 2500 entries with 1700 Art projects and 800 Science projects entered into the Fair.

The transfer of the director position to Jill (Thomas) Malcom, an original participant in the Fair in 1979, occurred in the Spring of 2002. Jill has a lifelong passion for, and involvement with, the Mastodon Park and Fair. The goals for her directorship include sustainability (create funding sources and processes to insure longevity of the Fair as an entity) and communication (utilize the website, faxes, newsletters, and email for direct communication). By 2005, the Fair held the status of being the largest combined Art and Science Fair in the United States and started using an invented online registration system to automate the entry process. In order to sustain the growth, full-time leadership was needed, and on July 1, 2006 the Fair hired Jill Malcom as the first full-time paid Executive Director position. Previously, from 1979 to 2006, the Fair had been completely run by volunteers.

In 2006, the name of the Fair was changed to the Mastodon Art/Science Regional Fair to pave the way for expanding the Fair’s service area. In 2007, the Fair invited 9-12th grade students from Washington, Franklin, and Crawford counties to participate and officially expanded our ISEF affiliation. By 2007, 98% of all registration were done online and the Fair used a newly completed database program to automate the printing of the judging sheet, score tabulation, prize assignment, and script generation. In 2008, over 6,400 people attended the Fair and students received over $35,000 in prizes, scholarships, and awards. We also expanded our Fair Week activities as we introduced our Dinosaur Egg Hunt.

The 2009 Fair had 2630 projects with 2898 students and included 9-12th grade art students from our expanded service area. To keep up with our growing Fair, we continued to expand our personnel by hiring an Operations Manager. The 8 day event now features 16 ASK Rooms where families can connect the art and science of life in free hands-on activities, and the Dinosaur Egg Hunt is now conducted in the Jurassic Jungle, being open to all ages! In 2009, we also moved the K-8th grade art displays downstairs due to the Fair receiving new art display units, allowing us to display more art in a smaller location.

2010 had almost 3,000 students participate in both art and science, with K-12th grade students from Franklin, Washington, Crawford and Jefferson Counties being invited. This was the first year for the commercialization of the Fair’s software product, “E-Fair”, allowing other fairs across the country to use a pilot version of E-Fair for online registration as well as fair administration. The Mastodon Fair receives revenue from annual license fees of the software. Mainstage shows were also introduced during the Saturday of Fair week, and the Dinosaur Egg hunt was moved inside, featuring many live plants for a real Jurassic Jungle experience. Due to the over 3,000 attendees, the Awards ceremony was moved to May to accommodate everyone and included slide shows of the event. The Mastodon Fair also received our first bequest from our long-time supporter, Lillian Mangelsdorf of Home Service Oil.

2011 was a year of change. With the economic downturn, the Fair was required to lay off the Operations Manager and cut back hours, as well as cancel many of the fair week activities. The only public event was the Friday night Mastodon Premiere, where students were interviewed by sponsors, who chose their favorite art and science project. Students could partake in the Dinosaur Egg hunt and INCOSE Robot demonstration, learn about leather crafting and water conservation techniques, or even discover bugs at the Bug Man booth in between interviews. We had over 3,500 visitors in three hours, making the Fair an enormously successful event. For the first time, winners in both art and science would go on to compete in international competitions because of the Fair’s affiliation with the Genius Art and Science Olympiad, and the International Science and Engineering Fair. Of the seven participants from our Fair, six placed in a competition involving forty-five other countries! And in July 2011, the Fair moved the Executive Director back to a full time position and re-instated the Family Day activities.

The 2012 Fair was the first time that a registration fee was instituted, and these fees could be paid by: ten dollars per project, four hours of volunteer time, or submission of a registration fee scholarship request. 9-12th grade judging for science projects was conducted similar to the previous year, continuing with an interview style. We again sent students to the Genius Art and Science Olympiad, where six of our students won seven awards! With over sixty-five countries involved in the Olympiad, our students were again top winners!