South Dakota Students Compete at Science Olympiad at the University of South Dakota
The daylong competition featured 23 events held in various campus locations and the nearby Vermillion High School gym.
“These 23 events cover topics from across the STEM spectrum,” said James Tracy, Ph.D., state director of the South Dakota Science Olympiad and lecturer in USD’s Department of Physics. Tracy has organized and run the event for the past four years.
“These events cover three key areas,” Tracy said. “One is knowledge based, so participants study a topic, such as human anatomy and physiology, and work together as a team to answer questions on a test.”
Other events test laboratory skills, he explained. This category includes the Crime Busters event, which requires participants to use their knowledge and investigative techniques, such as performing measurements and collecting data, to solve a crime.
“In the third type of event, the students build a contraption or device,” Tracy said. “We have an event called ‘Mission Possible,’ where the students build a Rube Goldberg device, a complicated machine that performs a simple task.”
At this year’s Science Olympiad, Tracy and his executive team of three USD students assembled an army of volunteers, including faculty subject specialists and undergraduate and graduate students, to ensure each event went smoothly and the results were judged fairly.
One faculty volunteer was Catalin Georgescu, Ph.D., associate professor and chair of the USD Department of Mathematical Sciences. He judged the Boomilever event, in which teams designed and built a cantilevered truss structure out of balsa wood before the competition date. The he Boomilever tests the strength of the truss as it supports a bucket while sand slowly fills it.
After helping a team from Michelson Middle School in Brookings test the strength of their truss, Georgescu reflected on the experience being a judge; it wasn’t just an opportunity to support an event on campus, but it was also “a lot of fun.”
Yankton Middle School seventh-grade science teacher Cheryl Schaeffer has served as a coach on and off for 23 years and has a history of bringing teams to USD’s campus.
“Yankton has been involved with Science Olympiad for 42 years,” she said. “We have seen Science Olympiad students become engineers and doctors as adults.”
Schaeffer’s students spend many weeks studying on their own and meeting after school to prepare for the competition. Both Yankton Middle School and High School teams have stellar records as competitors and often qualify to move on to the national competition.
The benefits go beyond the medals and accolades, Schaeffer added.
“The students learn study skills. They get self-confidence,” she said. “They learn to work together as a team, and the older students help the younger ones.”
Yankton Middle School student Abby Viereck, 14, took part in three events: Rocks and Minerals, Dynamic Planet, and Crime Busters.
“I prepared by studying the rules, using the website that Science Olympiad gives us and just deep diving into all the topics,” Viereck said. “My favorite event is Crime Busters because I really like working in the lab.”
Students like Viereck continue a tradition of South Dakotans testing their knowledge and skills at Science Olympiad. South Dakota was one of 17 states that took part in the first national Science Olympiad event in 1984 at Michigan State University.
USD’s participation in the event has continued ever since—with a brief break during the COVID-19 pandemic—as the university’s extensive science, technology, engineering and mathematics offerings and expert faculty make it an ideal place to hold the state-level competition.
“We have a broad array of faculty with expertise, skills and talents that they bring to their events,” Tracy said.
At the end of this year’s competition, Tracy stood on stage at USD’s Slagle Auditorium and announced the names of the teams who won their events.
“The awards ceremony is my favorite part of serving as state director,” he said. “After the first three minutes of calling names, you start to hear the jangle of medals bouncing off the chests of students who have won multiple medals. It’s very warm, exciting and satisfying to know these students have worked hard and spent this whole day challenging themselves.”
Future plans for the South Dakota competition include the possibility of adding a K-6 division to compete alongside the current middle school (grades 6 to 9) and high school (grades 9 to 12) divisions.
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