Olympiad competition held on campus

Nearly 600 students from 40 regional high schools and middle schools filled Jadwin and McDonnell halls on Thursday afternoon to compete in a regional tournament of the New Jersey Science Olympiad.

The tournament, which consisted of 16 events, tested students on their knowledge of various subjects, including chemistry, ecology and meteorology. Students also competed in hands-on events in which they built bridges, catapults and electric cars.

The University contributed space in lecture halls and labs in Jadwin, McDonnell, Fine and Guyot halls, Schultz Lab and Jadwin Gymnasium, and some members of the University faculty volunteered to plan and judge events relevant to their fields of study.

“There is a general understanding that faculty will volunteer,” the tournament’s events director, Anthony Makoujy, said. He said he has to “coax some professors” who don’t respond to his initial call for volunteers.

Makoujy is also the executive director of the Research and Development Council of New Jersey, a nonprofit organization that is the primary sponsor of the state Olympiad.

Other event supervisors, who make up half of the volunteers at the tournament, come from organizations that are members of the Research and Development Council.

Angelena Edwards, project manager at the Public Services Enterprise Group (PSEG) and a fourth-time volunteer at the tournament, said planning and judging her event, “Crave the Wave,” has always been a good experience.

“Sometimes, you see the same students come back, and you see the growth in their abilities,” she said, adding that witnessing team spirit and cooperation among team members was also rewarding.

The event, which tested middle school students on their knowledge of wave motion, was somewhat more challenging to score this year, Edwards said. “The level of the students’ understanding was relatively close,” she said, adding that she plans to further diversify the test questions next year.

Despite the planning required to organize nearly 120 volunteers and 600 students, the Research and Development Council has worked with the New Jersey Science Teachers Association every year to coordinate the New Jersey chapter of the national competition for 20 years.

“The percentage of kids [in the United States] enrolling in the sciences is going down,” Makoujy said. The competition is a good way to get students interested in science at a young age, he explained.

Programs like the Science Olympiad are important to scientific progress in general, he added, saying, “If innovation is going to continue, we need to create some young Albert Einsteins and Thomas Jeffersons.”

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The top 10 high school teams from Thursday’s tournament will go to the state tournament at Middlesex County College in Edison, where the one or two top-placing teams will be sent to compete at the national level. Members of the national championship team will earn four-year, full-ride scholarships to the host university, Augusta State University in Georgia.