ACADEMICS
Blair’s Research Fellows Delved Into Importance of Sleep in Adolescence When Blair’s research fellows set out to examine the importance of sleep in adolescence at the start of the 2019-2020 school year, they never imagined that their work would be interrupted by the coronavirus pandemic. Fast forward to spring 2020, and all eight students who were accepted to the research fellowship program established by Head of School Chris Fortunato and led by English teacher John Redos ’09 were looking at sleep from a whole new perspective—one associated with quarantine and distance learning.
As students prepared to leave Blairstown for spring break in early March, they were juggling three projects that had them collaborating with experts at Cornell Medical School, Rutgers University and Harvard’s School of Public Health as they considered sleep quality, the possibility of conducting sleep research in real time at Blair and testing the viability of a sleep curriculum for new Blair students. “The biggest lesson our fellows learned, hands down, is to not be afraid of a cold email,” said Mr. Redos, who joined
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