Regional STEM challenge sees Lenawee students test their knowledge
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- Lenawee County middle school students participated in the “You Be the Chemist” challenge, a STEM competition sponsored by the Chemical Education Foundation.
- The competition, held in Adrian, involved teams answering chemistry questions of increasing difficulty.
- Tecumseh Middle School won the competition, with Onsted and Blissfield teams taking second and third place, respectively.
- The event was supported by the Lenawee County Chemical Collaborative, which aims to promote local STEM careers.
ADRIAN — Interest in STEM education and the careers that utilize science, technology, engineering and mathematics is steadily growing among Lenawee County’s middle school-aged students.
Monday, Feb. 24 served as an example of this growing interest in STEM learning when more than 40 middle school students from four Lenawee County districts and one parent led group of students participated in the Lenawee County regional challenge of “You Be the Chemist,” a statewide and nationwide team-based STEM competition, sponsored and made possible by the Chemical Education Foundation (CEF).
“You Be the Chemist,” also known simply as “The Challenge,” builds essential skills like critical thinking, effective communication, entrepreneurship and problem-solving — each of which are key tools for academic success and future STEM careers.
Regional challenges are hosted around the state of Michigan, across the country and across Canada from January to March and are organized by CEF volunteers.
In Michigan, the Lenawee Regional Challenge — held at Adrian Public Schools and hosted by the Lenawee Intermediate School District (LISD) in conjunction with the Lenawee County Chemical Collaborative — was one of only four challenges being hosted in February. Other challenges were held in Midland in the Great Lakes Bay Regional Challenge Feb. 22, Monroe in the Monroe County Regional Challenge Feb. 27 and West Michigan in the Grand Ledge Regional Challenge Feb. 12.
During the regional competitions, teams of middle school students work together to answer timed multiple-choice and short-answer questions. In total, 40 questions were asked. Four rounds of 10 questions were part of the competition, and each round of the challenge grew increasingly more difficult.
Each individual question had been answered/solved by chemistry professors at the collegiate level, high school level and working chemists in the industry, according to Jackie Murray, science curriculum consultant for the Lenawee Intermediate School District who serves as the challenge organizer for Lenawee County.
“The idea is to make sure (the questions and answers) are accurate scientifically,” Murray said. “And to make sure they are appropriate for middle school students.”
This was only the third year in which Lenawee County has been a regional location for “You Be the Chemist.” Each year of the challenge has seen involvement from Adrian Public Schools, Onsted Community Schools and Tecumseh Public Schools.
Additional school teams participating for the first time in last week’s challenge included a team from Blissfield Middle School and a team of students from a Washtenaw County parent-led group.
“The ultimate hope, ideally, is it would be great to see one team from each of our 11 locals (school districts),” Murray said. “I hope word spreads that this (challenge) is a fun and easy way for kids to do STEM outside of the classroom.”
Schools can choose to opt into the chemistry challenge, which also has an additional component where teams can create a video about launching a start-up company aimed at solving sustainability issues and finding community-based solutions. All curriculum is provided to those districts that choose to opt into “You Be the Chemist.” The ultimate goal between the regional challenges and the video component is to increase a team’s chances of being invited to the national challenge at the beginning of June in Houston, Texas, where they compete for scholarship prizes.
In Murray’s role as the science curriculum consultant for the LISD, she provides curriculum information and instruction to all kindergarten-12th grade science teachers and departments throughout Lenawee County’s public schools. She acts as a “recruiter” to inform science teachers/departments about ways to get students involved in further learning outside of their daily school schedule.
“It’s really getting kids excited about science,” she said.
Regional challenge winners hail from Tecumseh Middle School
At the conclusion of last week’s competition — and even after a needed tiebreaker question to determine the third place finishing team — Tecumseh Middle School’s team of Maxwell Husband, Blake McNamara and Charlie Stark took home the evening’s biggest trophy, finishing in first place with the most correct questions answered.
Onsted’s two-person team of Matthew Reynolds and Ryker Tornow came in second, and the Blissfield team of Truitt Porter, Sofie Quinton, Garrett Smith and Kendyl Triggs — making their inaugural appearance at “You Be the Chemist” — claimed the tiebreaker question for third.
Support from Lenawee County and additional support within Tecumseh Public Schools has allowed middle school students to become involved in more extracurricular science/STEM activities, said Eryn Stamper, Project Lead the Way instructor who co-coaches science and STEM courses at Tecumseh Middle School with John Way, another Project Lead the Way instructor at Tecumseh.
Tecumseh has been one of the mainstays districts to compete at the Lenawee regional challenge over the past two years, and their team placement had been “kind of middle of the pack,” Stamper admitted.
“But seven of the kids who competed tonight have been with us for three years,” she said. “… They felt a lot more comfortable. They were a lot more prepared, and I think they just knew a little bit more about what to look for.”
The trophy that went back to Tecumseh Middle School with Husband, McNamara and Stark is representative of all the middle school students who prepared for the regional challenge, Stamper said.
“It just happened to be the dynamic of this team,” she said.
Onsted’s team of two and Blissfield’s team of four also earned second- and third-place trophies as well as congratulatory certificates.
Partnership with Lenawee County Chemical Collaborative
“You Be the Chemist” wouldn’t be a regional challenge in Lenawee County if it wasn’t for the support shown by the Lenawee County Chemical Collaborative, both Murray and Stamper said.
The focus behind the nationwide chemistry challenge and the reason why the Lenawee Chemical Collaborate backs the challenge, is because STEM-based businesses know there is a future workforce in Lenawee County, “and they want to work on developing it and keeping it local instead of it going elsewhere,” Murray said. “That’s a big priority of theirs.”
Companies associated with the Lenawee County Chemical Collaborative have offered their time to meet with middle school students and county schools to build relationships and promote local jobs in the chemical industry.
The chemical collaborative is made up of Lenawee Now, Align Center for Workforce Development, Wacker Chemical Corp., Anderson Development Company, Evonik, W2Fuel LLC and PPG Industries Inc.
Sponsors and representatives from the chemical collaborative attended last week’s “You Be the Chemist” challenge, some of them serving as guest judges, including many from Wacker Chemical Corp.
“It’s been great that Lenawee County has developed this chemistry collaborative and really supports the sciences and promotes kids in science and getting them to understand what’s here in the county,” Stamper said. “I think it’s important that we can keep our kids here, working here and knowing that they don’t have to necessarily leave and go to a massive city to do really good work.”
Now that three teams have emerged with trophies and certificates from the Lenawee regional challenge, team videos can be produced over the next couple of weeks to be submitted by the end of March. State winners and national finalists will be announced in early May.
— Contact reporter Brad Heineman at bheineman@lenconnect.com or follow him on X, formerly Twitter: @LenaweeHeineman.
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