Bringing Science Olympiad to Rural Alaska

October 31, 2024

Cherissa Dukelow

In a state both so large and so small, how can we include Alaskan children in STEM learning opportunities more evenly across the state?

This is an ever-present question on our minds within Alaska EPSCoR, especially in our coordination efforts of the Alaska Science Olympiad.

Science Olympiad is a youth competition comprising of 15-20 competitive activities that center around science, technology, engineering, and math, or STEM. Across the United States, middle school and high school students compete in Science Olympiad locally, regionally, and nationally. Participating in Science Olympiad encourages both STEM learning and team-oriented, hands-on problem solving. Students have a blast preparing and competing, while teachers get to incorporate fun science activities into their curriculum and coach students towards their competitive success.

In our third year of organizing this statewide STEM tournament for middle school students at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, we have had student teams participate coming locally from Fairbanks and North Pole, teams that can travel to Fairbanks by bus from Wasilla and Palmer, and teams that have flown in to Fairbanks from Kodiak and the Kenai Peninsula with help from our sponsors.

This fall, with remaining funding from the NSF EPSCoR Fire & Ice project, we were able to make a special effort to visit Alaskan communities that cannot feasibly transport a team of children to Fairbanks to compete in the Alaska Science Olympiad. We created a series of “Mini Olympiads” – one-off local Science Olympiad events to engage students at underserved, rural schools in Alaska.  

Whereas the Alaska Science Olympiad at the University of Alaska Fairbanks is designed for middle school students only, at these mini events at small rural schools, we design the event to  include all the school’s students. We choose just a few events flexible enough to accommodate participation from a wide range of ages.

So far, our team has traveled to Seldovia and Klukwan. Next month we plan to visit St. Paul, and possibly one or two additional rural Alaska communities.