West Holmes students explore new horizons through Akron Science Olympiad
On Saturday, March 5, the West Holmes Science Olympiad teams competed in the Akron Regional Science Olympiad Competition. Working together to achieve a strong seventh-place finish for the high school were team members Nate Frank, Steven Kocsis, Logan Mullet, Tyler Gray, Kirk Hendrick, Derek Reutter, Kane Schonauer, RaeAnn Keck, Hayley Kick, Jeremy Kocsis, Rebecca Rohr, Alyssa Russell, Rebekah Schonauer, Sam Boyd, Nick Gantzler, Max Lehman and Lacey McClain.
The Middle School team also represented West Holmes well, earning a 14th-place finish. This year’s team members included eighth-graders Raven Dillon, Stacey Plank, Caleb Stein, and Jaylin Yoder, and seventh-graders Courtney Baker, Madison Baker, Madison Cox, Adam Croup, Elise Knebusch, Kinsey Martin, Brittney Masters, Felicia Parrish, Emily Safarik, Hannah Schlegel, and Abby Wagner. Courtney and Madison Baker did an outstanding job on their Write It Do It event, earning a medal for their fourth-place finish.
The purpose of the Science Olympiad is to create a passion in teens for learning science, with an emphasis on teamwork and a commitment to excellence, to improve the quality of science education throughout the nation by changing the way science is perceived and the way it is taught and to celebrate and recognize the outstanding achievement of both students and teachers in the areas of science and technology.
For Rachel Snyder, the West Holmes science teacher who coaches the team, those are wonderful reasons to hold the olympiad, but she had plenty of inspiration in getting her students involved.
“My personal goal in starting a Science Olympiad team at West Holmes has been to challenge the minds of our gifted students,” said Snyder. “I want them to learn how to solve problems, how to study, how to think outside the box, and hopefully in doing this, they’ll be inspired by some of the awesome science content that they’re working with and realize that science can be fun.
“I want my students to get rid of the picture they all have in their minds of what a scientist looks like, with the crazy hair, white lab coat and closed up in a laboratory with beakers of bubbling liquids all around, and come to see that they are scientists.”
In that sense, Snyder believes the effort is working. She began five years ago with a team of 11 slightly reluctant middle school students, competing in half of the events offered. It has now grown to the point that West Holmes has a high school team and a middle school team, and Snyder has to conduct tryouts for the high school team because of the number of students who want to compete.
“It’s been such a great feeling to see the increase in interest in science,” said Snyder.
As for this year’s group, Snyder said that it was good to see them zeroing in on what they needed to achieve to be successful, both in preparing for the olympiad and then performing during it.
“I’ve never had a group of students who have worked as hard as this year’s group,” said Snyder. “We started meeting at the end of October for two hours, one day each week. Many of the team members, especially at the high school level, spent countless hours outside of our scheduled practices preparing for their events.”
Snyder said that preparation left everyone, including her, with a confident feeling heading into the olympiad. “They knew how much time they’d spent preparing, and they were excited to see the results of their efforts,” said Snyder. “I know that every student on the team went into each event and gave it every ounce of effort they had in them. If we didn’t place in an event, it certainly was not because they didn’t give it their all.”
While all were successful, none were more so than the duo of Nate Frank and Kirk Hendrick, who put together a scientific experience that wowed the judges.
Frank and Hendrick pulled out an astounding first place finish in the Sounds of Music event. The two put in many hours of hard work to build a percussion and a wind instrument out of PVC pipe, and then amazed the judges with their original renditions of Shenandoah and Do Re Mi.
“This is only the third time we’ve ever placed first in an event, and this marks the first time we’ve placed first in a prebuild event where we had to construct something ahead of time and bring it with us to the competition,” said Snyder.
The previous firsts were in 2007 when Frank and Lauren Evans won Write It Do It, and in 2009 when Alyssa Russell and Rebekah Schonauer won Disease Detectives. “It was so great to watch Nate and Kirk from the planning stages late in the fall, up to when they completed their final, working instruments just days before the competition, and to see the sense of accomplishment on their faces,” said Snyder. “And then to come out with a performance like the one they gave on Saturday, they every bit deserved to win that event.”
The middle school team came into this year’s competition very young. Only three of the 16 students were on the team last year, and 11 of the 16 are seventh graders. Snyder said that she is confident that if they all return next year, they will have a strong, experienced team.
“I’m still proud of them for giving it their best effort, and whether or not they have medals to show for it, I know that each one of them learned a lot from this experience,” said Snyder.
Also faring well were high school team members Rebecca and Rebekah’s Disease Detectives project, where they placed second.
This event is sponsored by the Center for Disease Control. The idea of Disease Detectives is that students are presented with a description of a public health problem, such as an outbreak of food poisoning or a specific flu strain (like H1N1). Based on the descriptions, the students are required to generate a hypothesis on the origin of the problem, then evaluate the data they’re given to identify patterns, trends and risk factors.
This year’s topic was salmonella, and the girls dug in and performed well during the experiment.
“We were given an article and a graph and a map about an outbreak in the U.S.” said Rohr. “The focus was the spreading of salmonella by pet frogs and turtles. They asked questions about how many total cases there were, which state had the most, and reasons why more younger children were diagnosed with it. We had to hypothesize why Utah had the highest number of cases and hypothesize on what had caused the outbreak, and they asked whether washing the frog and turtle tank in the sink was a good practice and why or why not. I had fun at the competition, and I hope to do it again next year.”
Other students who placed included Sam Boyd and Nick Gantzler (fifth place - Fossils); Kane Schonauer (fifth place - Mousetrap Vehicle, and sixth place - Tower Building); Nick Gantzler and Max Lehman (fifth place - Optics); Frank and Hayley Kick (fifth place - Write It Do It); and Derek Reutter and Alyssa Russell (sixth place - Remote Sensing, and sixth place - Ecology).
The Middle School team also represented West Holmes well, earning a 14th-place finish. This year’s team members included eighth-graders Raven Dillon, Stacey Plank, Caleb Stein, and Jaylin Yoder, and seventh-graders Courtney Baker, Madison Baker, Madison Cox, Adam Croup, Elise Knebusch, Kinsey Martin, Brittney Masters, Felicia Parrish, Emily Safarik, Hannah Schlegel, and Abby Wagner. Courtney and Madison Baker did an outstanding job on their Write It Do It event, earning a medal for their fourth-place finish.
The purpose of the Science Olympiad is to create a passion in teens for learning science, with an emphasis on teamwork and a commitment to excellence, to improve the quality of science education throughout the nation by changing the way science is perceived and the way it is taught and to celebrate and recognize the outstanding achievement of both students and teachers in the areas of science and technology.
For Rachel Snyder, the West Holmes science teacher who coaches the team, those are wonderful reasons to hold the olympiad, but she had plenty of inspiration in getting her students involved.
“My personal goal in starting a Science Olympiad team at West Holmes has been to challenge the minds of our gifted students,” said Snyder. “I want them to learn how to solve problems, how to study, how to think outside the box, and hopefully in doing this, they’ll be inspired by some of the awesome science content that they’re working with and realize that science can be fun.
“I want my students to get rid of the picture they all have in their minds of what a scientist looks like, with the crazy hair, white lab coat and closed up in a laboratory with beakers of bubbling liquids all around, and come to see that they are scientists.”
In that sense, Snyder believes the effort is working. She began five years ago with a team of 11 slightly reluctant middle school students, competing in half of the events offered. It has now grown to the point that West Holmes has a high school team and a middle school team, and Snyder has to conduct tryouts for the high school team because of the number of students who want to compete.
“It’s been such a great feeling to see the increase in interest in science,” said Snyder.
As for this year’s group, Snyder said that it was good to see them zeroing in on what they needed to achieve to be successful, both in preparing for the olympiad and then performing during it.
“I’ve never had a group of students who have worked as hard as this year’s group,” said Snyder. “We started meeting at the end of October for two hours, one day each week. Many of the team members, especially at the high school level, spent countless hours outside of our scheduled practices preparing for their events.”
Snyder said that preparation left everyone, including her, with a confident feeling heading into the olympiad. “They knew how much time they’d spent preparing, and they were excited to see the results of their efforts,” said Snyder. “I know that every student on the team went into each event and gave it every ounce of effort they had in them. If we didn’t place in an event, it certainly was not because they didn’t give it their all.”
While all were successful, none were more so than the duo of Nate Frank and Kirk Hendrick, who put together a scientific experience that wowed the judges.
Frank and Hendrick pulled out an astounding first place finish in the Sounds of Music event. The two put in many hours of hard work to build a percussion and a wind instrument out of PVC pipe, and then amazed the judges with their original renditions of Shenandoah and Do Re Mi.
“This is only the third time we’ve ever placed first in an event, and this marks the first time we’ve placed first in a prebuild event where we had to construct something ahead of time and bring it with us to the competition,” said Snyder.
The previous firsts were in 2007 when Frank and Lauren Evans won Write It Do It, and in 2009 when Alyssa Russell and Rebekah Schonauer won Disease Detectives. “It was so great to watch Nate and Kirk from the planning stages late in the fall, up to when they completed their final, working instruments just days before the competition, and to see the sense of accomplishment on their faces,” said Snyder. “And then to come out with a performance like the one they gave on Saturday, they every bit deserved to win that event.”
The middle school team came into this year’s competition very young. Only three of the 16 students were on the team last year, and 11 of the 16 are seventh graders. Snyder said that she is confident that if they all return next year, they will have a strong, experienced team.
“I’m still proud of them for giving it their best effort, and whether or not they have medals to show for it, I know that each one of them learned a lot from this experience,” said Snyder.
Also faring well were high school team members Rebecca and Rebekah’s Disease Detectives project, where they placed second.
This event is sponsored by the Center for Disease Control. The idea of Disease Detectives is that students are presented with a description of a public health problem, such as an outbreak of food poisoning or a specific flu strain (like H1N1). Based on the descriptions, the students are required to generate a hypothesis on the origin of the problem, then evaluate the data they’re given to identify patterns, trends and risk factors.
This year’s topic was salmonella, and the girls dug in and performed well during the experiment.
“We were given an article and a graph and a map about an outbreak in the U.S.” said Rohr. “The focus was the spreading of salmonella by pet frogs and turtles. They asked questions about how many total cases there were, which state had the most, and reasons why more younger children were diagnosed with it. We had to hypothesize why Utah had the highest number of cases and hypothesize on what had caused the outbreak, and they asked whether washing the frog and turtle tank in the sink was a good practice and why or why not. I had fun at the competition, and I hope to do it again next year.”
Other students who placed included Sam Boyd and Nick Gantzler (fifth place - Fossils); Kane Schonauer (fifth place - Mousetrap Vehicle, and sixth place - Tower Building); Nick Gantzler and Max Lehman (fifth place - Optics); Frank and Hayley Kick (fifth place - Write It Do It); and Derek Reutter and Alyssa Russell (sixth place - Remote Sensing, and sixth place - Ecology).
Published: March 13, 2011
