Students Engage in STEM Competitions

By Jett Goetz, Roxane Park, and Leo Zhang

Academy students hosted and competed in a variety of STEM competitions this term. Among these were the student-led Exeter Math Club Competition (EMCC) and the Science Olympiad Invitational Competition.

EMCC

The annual EMCC is a middle school math competition run by Exeter’s Math Club, drawing participants from all around the world. This year, it was held on Jan 29, and it was led by Math Club coheads, seniors Neil Chowdhury, Jacob David, Lucy Xiao, and Eric Yang. 

Running for almost the entire day, the competition garnered more than 800 middle school registrants, only slightly less than previous, in-person years. The competition itself consists of four sections. “Two of them are individual [and] two of them are collaborative,” Xiao explained. “For the individual rounds, one of them is speed. It tests your ability to do problems fast. And the other one is accuracy, which has harder problems and you have more time to work on them.” 

All of the problems used on the tests were written by Math Club members, and preparations began during fall term. “Around November we started thinking about problem ideas and brainstorming,” Yang said. “In terms of actual logistics and setup, that all happened throughout the month of January.”

As the competition is normally held in person at the Academy, many adjustments were made to adapt to the virtual format this year during COVID. Nearly 40 Exonians volunteered to proctor the various Zoom breakout rooms. and Yang explained how “It’s a lot harder to monitor students when they’re working through Zoom,” Yang said. “You sort of have to trust that their camera is pointed at their workspace and they’re not pulling out a calculator on the side, although you can’t really account for that.” 

Xiao thought that the online format allowed the competition to be more inclusive. “Often some students can’t travel to participate in a competition—I think that it certainly gives us a wider range of students,” she said.

But the coheads also highlighted that the event was not just about competition. “Something that we try to do, at the end of the day, is to create a fun experience for them,” Yang said. “So interspersed with the competition itself, we did have other small events. For example, we hosted two student panels this year, which were in the form of webinars. And they were to just give contestants . . . a way for them to experience or get a sense of what Exeter is like.” 

Xiao described another panel that focused on the underrepresentation of girls in mathematics: “I feel like middle school is sort of the place where girls start to be less involved in STEM. So I felt the need to share the perspective of girls in STEM.” Math teacher and club adviser Chelsea Drescher, former Lucy Cai ‘21, and Xiao were featured on the panel to talk about their experiences in the primarily male-dominated field. 

This year’s EMCC concluded after the four rounds, lunch breaks for both west and east coast time zones, multiple panels, and a closing awards ceremony. “I’m excited and I trust the future math club members to bring their creativity forwards,” Yang concluded.

Science Olympiad

The Science Olympiad is a competition where students compete in events featuring different branches of science. Due to the pandemic, this year’s competition was held online on Feb. 5. 

Prep Byran Huang elaborated on the structure of the Olympiad: “Science Olympiad embodies all different topics of science. Each year there are different events. Events are like a test or something you build and you compete against other schools against certain criteria that may be a test score you wanna achieve or a certain performance on a device.”

The Academy’s team was chosen through a test on the nervous system, with preparations for the contest starting in the fall. Huang, a member of the junior varsity team, competed in the antenna building event, taking a test on radio frequencies, time, and physics. 

The competition being online versus in-person affected the experience. “[I] definitely feel it would’ve been more like a science fair type of thing where you’d have like different groups stationed around a big auditorium, and it’d be more supervised,” Smith said. “But overall, we are really fortunate that Exeter was able to secure all of the materials necessary for all the tests, like chemistry equipment and building materials.”

Smith’s even included a test and a lab portion where participants identified different substances by finding their pH and other factors.  “It was my first [Science Olympiad], so it was definitely more difficult,” Smith said. “You’re allowed to bring a sheet of paper with notes, but I wasn’t too sure on that.” 

While this was Smith’s first competition, it certainly won’t be his last. As talented Exonians continue to test their knowledge in a variety of STEM competitions, they can look forward to more competitions on the horizon.