CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Twenty volunteers from ERDC’s Construction Engineering Research Laboratory (CERL) helped with the spring 2013 Illinois State Science Olympiad competition, which was held again this year on the University of Illinois campus. CERLites designed and supervised 12 of the 56 events, with the other volunteers offering support.
“Science Olympiad is really a huge commitment for people who volunteer,” said Patricia Kemme, who led recruitment efforts for helpers in Champaign and also supervised the Pentathlon event. “Each supervisor spends 10-20 hours preparing for the event. Then they are busy all day from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. for building events, or five one-hour sessions for lab/test events, with at least another hour to grade and rank.”
According to the Illinois Science Olympiad website, Science Olympiad began as the creative endeavors of Dr. Gerard Putz and Jack Cairns who thought it necessary to do something about science education in the United States to get students not only interested in, but excited about, science. It was tested in schools to determine student response and then enlarged to make it a multiple-school competition. It has since grown from a one-county competition to one which now includes teams from all 50 states and parts of Canada.
Students in grades 6-12 participate in the Science Olympiad. The event is designed to be a hands-on experience. It emphasizes biology, chemistry, earth science, and physics, with engineering and technology applications that combine several of these disciplines. For the state competition, each school fields a team of 15 top students. This year, 45 middle schools and 47 high schools competed in 28 events in each division.
Volunteers for the state competition included: high school level – Michael Petr, Melixa Rivera- Sustache, Keyla Rodriguez, Natalie Myers, and Carey Baxter; middle school level – Ashley Boyd, Kathryn Guy, Donna Schell, Chandler Armstrong, Travis King, Kensey Amaya, Harold Balbach, Mark Ginsberg, Ghassan Al-Chaar, Michael and Pat Kemme, Larry Stephenson, John Mudrick, Susan Drozdz and Vincent Hock.
Mark Ginsberg supervised the Water Quality competition. “In this event, the task involves netting invertebrate species from a water source and counting them as a way to determine water quality, as in how polluted a stream might be,” he explained. “The goal is to teach the fundamentals of water chemistry and for the kids to be able to identify the macro-scale insects, worms, and other species.”
Travis King and Kensey Amaya were co-leads for the Heredity event. According to King, “This was mainly test-based where the kids solved problems involving genetics. It had questions about things like relationships between parental and children’s traits, such as eye color and blood type, and how that relates back to chromosomes and DNA.”
Many of the same CERL employees had volunteered earlier this year for the Regional Science Olympiad at Champaign’s Parkland Community College, and several have helped with one of the events over multiple years. Susan Drozdz, whose participation in the state competition spans four years so far, said, “It’s really fun because of the kids’ enthusiasm. The competition doesn’t get too serious, but everyone wants to do well. I also get great support – this year, John Mudrick helped lead the Geocaching event and as always, the Olympiad provided really good volunteers.” Drozdz plans to support the Science Olympiad again next year.