All WA Science Olympiad Coaches:
Thank you for all the hard work helping student with Regional preparation! We just concluded a wonderful Regional at Bothell High school, thanks to great work by a lot of volunteers and tournament directors Mrs. Guard and Mr. Skariah. Can’t wait for five more Regionals in the next two weeks. Once each regional finalize their score and the advancing teams, we will notify the team promptly about State qualification.
There are two items I would like to update you on:
1) Sustainable Energy. Previously we emphasized the importance of following the rubric about device testing. Being a new event, we understand students and coaches may have a learning curve. This shows at Bothell (C) Regional where quite a few teams got tiered because of not following Impound rules. Yesterday we gave all teams opportunities to make up for the missing pieces within the impound time periods. At State competition, there may not be enough time for such accommodation.
We reviewed with event supervisors on ways to better guide student and to streamline the impound process at the next few regionals. A new checklist (v4) reflects this effort. Students can use this together with the rubric to make sure they meet all the impound requirement. (This version is also referenced in the updated unified schedule). We will work with each region’s event supervisor to implement this consistently, and we will officially adopt this version of checklist at State tournament.
2) WSO board application is open. If you (or people in your Scioly network) are passionate about volunteering for WSO as board member, apply or recommend. If you may have students interested in serving as student board members, please let them know as well. The deadline is April 30th. We will share more information soon (They can also just email me).
Thank you!
Lei Jiang