Alumni Spotlight: Violetta Fregoso (TWS 2022)
April is Alumni Month, and this year Tucson Waldorf School is proud to feature class of 2022 graduate, Violetta Fregoso. Violetta is currently a sophomore at University High School where she has been demonstrating what it means to be engaged in education.
As a student in University High School Honors Chemistry class, she was invited to participate in the SARSEF (Southern Arizona Research Science and Engineering Foundation) Science Fair. She eagerly accepted, and began working on project that was an area of interest for her: how do certain essential oils (specifically, grape fruit, lemon, and Thieves compound) compare to chemical cleaning agents with regards to preventing or prohibiting bacterial growth? She became interested in essential oils and their effect on bacteria because her family uses natural, non-chemical cleaning supplies in her home. She included the Thieves Essential Oil (EO) blend because she was curious about its efficacy against the Lysol cleaner. She first learned about Thieves EO through her tenure at Tucson Waldorf School because they use Thieves to clean surfaces in the classrooms. She also included the history of Thieves in her project as well which she found fascinating.
Her project was interviewed by five judges and she received third place in Chemistry out of 1400 entries. This was the first science fair that she participated in. She started working on her project at the beginning of the school year in August and completed it in March. She had to work out of a level BSL2 (Biological Safety Level 2) lab because she was working with bacteria. University High School does not have a BSL2 lab, so she had to find a professor with a BSL2 lab at the University of Arizona. She worked with Dr. James T. Watson and his lab out of the U of A School of Anthropology at the Arizona State Museum on campus.
The result of her project showed that the Thieves blend demonstrated varying degrees of effectiveness in reducing bacterial counts, equal to the chemical cleaner. The experiment indicated that certain essential oils have the potential to inhibit bacterial growth and may contribute to the elimination of bacteria.
During her junior and senior years, she will be invited to attend SARSEF again and plans to extend her research further by investigating each of the five essential oils present in the Thieves blend. Her goal is to identify the specific EO responsible for the blend’s effectiveness in inhibiting bacterial growth. There is an opportunity to attend the Nationals and win scholarships for college.
Her goals after high school include attending the University of Arizona for her bachelor’s degree and then attending the University of Illinois at Chicago to earn a degree in Dentistry with a specialty in Orthodontics.
If you have young children and need a babysitter who is also a good influence, she is available for babysitting as a side job so please contact her at – 520-627-0838/ She is available weekends and this Summer and is CPR trained as well.
Her project below is online in the SARSEF site so please click the link if you would like to learn more.