peru a ese eed

Earth Exploration Vehicle
(EEV) rolls across the flat

landscape. Carefully its Oriver, an omonaut,

guides it to pick up the next terrestrial
sample: an aluminum beverage can.
Extending a mechanica! arm, ithe EEV
driver Dlucks if up and orcps ilin her
sample case. next to an orange. Then
she heaos back to her base, wnere a
crewmate will replace her. Time is running
snort. Soon they will have to return nome.
These extraterrestrials are not from
another planet but from Portland,
Oregon—McLoughlin Junior High Scheel,
to be exact. They are participants in a
unique competition called the Olympics
of the Mind. or OM. Last spring the four
girls, Patricia Zeman, Tracy Manning, Heidi
Neiison, and Kristin Fortlage, along with
hundreds of other youngsters, made
a pilgrimage to Glassboro State College,
in southwestern New Jersey, to compete
In events designed to challenge iheir
creativity, their teamwork, and even their
flair tor the theatrical. The challenges
offered there were variec to suit the ages

of the participants, who ranged from

five to eighieen. A visitor to the Glassboro
campus during one of these competitions
would likely have seen crowds of eager
youngsters going from one competition
to another in the schooi's gym and student
center and costumed as everything from
an ancient Egyptian to a creature irom
outer space. all part of a somewhat
theatrical and bizarre event.

Just a little over four years old, the
Olympics of the Mind event has grown
trom a tocal competition run solely for
schools in New Jersey; it is now a national
event. The format is always the same.
Every year members of OM, about 1.300
schools at last count. work on one cf
five challenges for local, and later national,
competitions. Participating students
form teams of no more than five persons
to work on the challenge of their choice.
Each team has an adult coach to act
as an adviser and may spend up to five
months perfecting a solution to the
problem it chooses to solve. .

The Olympics of the Mind began in
1978 as the brainchild of Or. Samuel

Olympics of the Mind champions Atlas! a national competition for the intellectually gifted.

26 (OMNI

yy

Micklus, a Glassbore State professor of
industrial design, and Ted Gouriey. a
director of gifted-children education for
the state of New Jersey. To stimulate

his stude7"s' creative juices, Micklus often
gave th sxercises that asked them

to solve U: mplex probiems with simple
materiais. Gourley heard about these
classroom exercises and asked Micklus
to desian a competition for students in
the New Jersey school system, using
similar challenges.

“We did it as a one-time kind of thing,”
says Caro! Micklus, executive director
of the program, “but it got so popular, it
became a yearly event." Its popularity
has grown since. Last year’s OM regionals
in Portland were the first of their kind
or the West Coast.

“The Oiympics of the Mind is a sortof
problem-solving bowl,” says regionai
coordinator Kristy Clark, “More tnan two
hundred children entered. in three age
groups, trom kindergarteners to high-
school seniors.”

The challenges outlined each year are
geared to different age groups. For
example, iast year they included, for
younaer gfarticipants, something called
the Cruppets. (Youngsters were asked to
write and oeriorm a short piay witn five
cruppets, or puppets. one of which had to
be moceled aiter a celebrity. Dolly
Parton was one suggestion.)

There was Strike It Flich, in which each
team had to collect gold nuggets
(popcorn kernels), Nand them off to a
blindfolded team member, ang direct nim
through an obstacle course to the assay
office without touching or speaking to him.
The ume hmit was seven minutes, The
chatlenge required (he team to devise
some xinc of workable aucio-
communications system—whistling or
clapping. tor example—io guide the
runner along. (Some regional competitions
addes a new wrinkle lo the competition.
“In Alaska they used real gold,” Caro!
Micklus recalls.)

The older children had challenges like
Earthquake Structure, in which they
were asked (o Duild a structure, using
balsa wood strips. (hat was no taller than