For the past 25 years, Science Olympiad has led a revolution in science education. What began as a grassroots assembly of science teachers is now one of the premiere science competitions in the nation, providing rigorous, standards-based challenges to more than 5,700 teams in 48 states. The North Carolina Science Olympiad (NCSO) is third in the country in student participation. The events are designed to enhance and strengthen both science content and process skills, as well as provide the students exposure to a variety of career choices and to practicing scientists and mentors.

St. Mark formed a team and competed for the first time during the 2008-2009 school year. Our first year we competed against 20 varsity teams, and ranked 6th place. The top 5 teams go onto the state level competition, so we plan to be at the state competition during the 2009-2010.

The events consist of various topics related to Earth, Life, Physical Sciences as well as technology. There are several building events -- bridges, robots, catapults, bottle rockets with parachute, non-motorized cars and rubberband powered airplanes. Some of the events are test based. The student teams (usually 2) work together to identify rocks or minerals or body parts or constellations. One event consisted of defining a procedure to test a hypothesis, performing it, and writing up a lab report… basically testing the students’ ability to apply the Scientific Method.

As coach [Kris Lyles], my greatest pleasure was seeing how much the students enjoyed the competition. They came home from the competition weighted down with medals and ready to start working on next year.