First Print Issue of Scientific Scarsdalian Shows Professionalism and Direction

After months of researching, writing, editing, designing, printing, and much more, Cindy DeDianous, Matthew Barotz, Simone Glajchen, and other members of the Scientific Scarsdalian STEM publication finally got the opportunity to distribute their first in-print issue. The science focus, literary aspect and artistic appeal made the magazine the talk of the school. The relatively-young club has a fruitful future ahead of them, as shown by the present progress.

DeDianous, Barotz, and Glajchen are scientists and journalists who might be mistaken for professionals, though they are still in high school.

At the beginning of March, when members of the Scientific Scarsdalian club stood at the entrances handing out copies of their first issue, people were in for a pleasant surprise. Rather than receiving a nice-looking magazine student publication, they were handed a scientific magazine of a special quality. This issue, centered on psychology, discussing topics such as illusions, dreams, seasonal depression, optogenetics, the bystander effect, and much more. The complex crossword puzzle cannot be forgotten either.

Editor-in-chief DeDianous was proud of how the first edition came out and has high aspirations for the future of the club/STEM-based magazine.

“One thing that was really important,” explained DeDianous, “is that the articles are engaging and accessible because a lot of times, people don’t read about science; it can be super dense and hard to get into if you don’t have background knowledge. We wanted to make sure everyone, no matter what knowledge they had, could gain something from it and find it interesting and want to come back to it.”

The result was a publication that was accessible but at the same time sophisticated enough to provide readers with new information to learn. DeDianous said, “People who like both humanities and STEM and art can join the club and have the chance to write about interesting topics, both on the more technical side and more interesting curiosity about the world around us. It’s a really great place for people of different interests to mix. We have a graphics team, writing team, and all of that.”

The club as it is known today was only founded last year, with a website as the sole hub for their articles, and the goal of producing an issue in print so that it “can be shared with the entire Scarsdale community.” There have been previous attempts to create a “Scientific Scarsdalians,” club, but these were unsuccessful. This new club hosts the website which you can see here, (https://scientificscarsdalian.org/), and is gaining traction through the print edition and articles online.

The next magazine is already in progress, “We are thinking of doing an environmental theme for the next issue. For example, something that is Scarsdale-related is our compost system. There are lots of interesting details behind it, but most people don’t know how it really works,” shared DeDianous.

This ties into the greater them of what makes the Scientific Scarsdalian truly the official STEM magazine of Scarsdale, rather than just another generic science magazine. The club aims to introduce as many local elements as possible to their issues. There are some student-led studies that do not tie back to Scarsdale necessarily, but all of the articles either mention ties to the community or are conducted by the young scientists within the community.

DeDianous describes the club community as a welcoming, interesting place, saying, “I think our teamwork is a really important aspect of encouraging people to work together on articles or peer edit, get feedback from both the officers as well as other writers to really get multiple eyes on something and take different perspectives into account. At meetings, we brainstorm, outline, write, edit, and other times we mix in fun events, such as Kahoots to change things up and test people on their scientific knowledge.”

The budding club will only continue to grow as the years pass and their magazine could soon become the main “resource for Scarsdalians to get scientific information that they might not be able to get otherwise.”

Scientific Scarsdalian Club Officer list:
Editors-in-Chief: Simone Glajchen and Cindy DeDianous
News Editors: Jaden Tepper and Rose Kinoshita
Opinion Editor: Matthew Barotz
Feature Editor: Irene Li
Creative Director: Olivia Liu