Judge Handbook

This handbook provides information about the fair for judges. 

This handbook is a work in progress. Please send any questions, comments, etc. to the webmaster. 

Getting Started

Looking to help out with the Mercer Science and Engineering Fair? If so, we can use your expertise as a judge. 

Sign up for a Fair Judge account. You will need the account as part of the judging process. We will get in contact soon thereafter. 

Contact us if you have questions. We can be reached via phone and email.

Who Does What?

The Judge Manager is the top dog in the judge hierarchy and has the final say in all things judging except for the president of the club. This is a short outline that highlights how judging is managed. 

  • Club President - manage club
  • Fair Director - manages competition
    • Judge Manager - manages Judge Groups
      • Judge Groups - judge a set of projects, each Judge Group has a page on this site
        • Head Judge
        • Judges
        • Event - event that the group will be judging
        • Categories - list of categories that will be judge in the event
        • Awards - list of possible awards

The Judge Manager manages the judge groups. Each judge group has a head judge to manage the group. All judges are assigned to one or more judge groups. Judges will have access to the public portion of the submitted projects once they are finalized and reviewed. 

A Quick Judge Overview

All judges should sign up for an account on this website. Please include contact information including your phone number. Ignore the school field since this is for students and teachers. As part of the account creation process you may indicate that you want to be a Judge (the other option is teacher). The account creation is automatic but the judge approval is done manually so it may take us a little while (a day or two at most) to respond. Contact the Judge Manager if you do not get a response or have issues creating an account.

Once you have been approved as a judge you can enter additional information when you log in. This information is about your background and what types of projects you can judge. Please enter this information as soon as possible because we use it for assigning judges just before the fair. You should also indicate whether you can judge this year. Normally this will be the only item you need to change after your first year of judging.

Judges will also have access to all the research plans and abstracts for projects entered in the fair. This will allow judges to prepare before they arrive at the fair.

The following sections provide additional information about judging.