Help us host an annual STEM competition for aspiring high school scientists!

1. Who are we?

Science Olympiad is a national program that engages pre-college students in STEM through competitions that involve various STEM fields. Each competition has teams of 15 members each competing as partners or trios in 23 different events; placements across the events are totaled up, and the lowest total team wins. At Northwestern, we are both a registered student organization at Northwestern and an Alumni Chapter of the National Science Olympiad organization, and we are committed to hosting an annual invitational competition at Northwestern University for high school teams in northwest Illinois and surrounding areas. This event would host over 400 student competitors and their coaches, helping them prepare for their regional, state and national competitions and letting them experience the beautiful Northwestern campus. 

Our mission is to foster a healthy relationship between students and the STEM disciplines through friendly and serious competition, as well as give back to the Science Olympiad community. Many of us participated in Science Olympiad before college, and have fond memories and great friends from those experiences. These experiences also motivated many of us to pursue a college degree and career in STEM, and we want to help provide these meaningful and important experiences by hosting a quality Invitational. 

This is only our second year as a registered student organization at Northwestern. However, despite our newness, last year, we successfully hosted an online invitational that had nearly 70 teams attending from all over the United States, including the 4th, 5th, and 6th best teams in the nation. We received positive feedback and praise, as well as requests and hopes from coaches and students that we would host an in-person invitational the following year. This year, we want to fulfill those wishes and provide an experience that they will remember fondly as a highlight of their year. 

2. Why We Need Your Help

Putting on any Science Olympiad competition is a huge undertaking. There are lots of supplies like chemicals and measurement devices that are needed to run certain events. We need a lot of space on campus to host so many people for nearly an entire day, and thus need to reserve large sections of campus buildings. And, of course, any competition needs to have awards. With the number of teams we are hosting, we would need about 300 medals to deck out the top performers in each event, as well as additional trophies for overall team victors. All of these elements are vital for a successful event, and we need your help to obtain these resources. 

3. How You Can Help

Make a gift! Even $10 makes a huge difference towards increasing the quality of our event. That could mean an extra reagent we can include in our chemistry events, an extra stopwatch for timing model plane flights, or five more medals we can award. 

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