From Olympiad wins to national stage, NCSSM students shine

The click of dress shoes echoes through the hall, and the sharp smell of starch from freshly pressed suits wafts through the Academic Commons on the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics Morganton campus.

It is academic competition time! The moments that students have been rigorously preparing for have finally arrived. This past week, the NCSSM-M Science Olympiad team impressively brought home first place overall for both the Varsity and Junior Varsity teams, along with several other awards. As NCSSM welcomed the decorated Olympians home, we sent off another team in hopes of bringing home a win.

One of the teams that carried this momentum forward was NCSSM’s chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE). This organization is one of the largest student-governed organizations and was first founded in 1975 at Purdue University.

Initially designed as a support system for Black engineering students to improve recruitment and retention, NSBE was founded after the dropout rate of Black first-year engineering students exceeded 80%. This alarming rate was attributed to intense isolation, an exclusionary campus culture rooted in racism, and a lack of academic support and pre-college preparation. What started as a group of six students and an adviser, affectionately known as “The Chicago Six,” is now an international organization with over 30,000 members worldwide and 700 chapters serving pre-collegiate, collegiate, and professional engineers.

Each year, the organization hosts a national convention. At this grand annual event, attendees can engage in career development, technical workshops, networking, and several highly competitive academic competitions.

This year, 15 students from both NCSSM campuses had the opportunity to attend and compete in several events including Ten80, a motorsport themed competition where students performance engineer RC cars and autonomous vehicles, KidWind, a renewable energy competition where students design, build, and test their own wind turbines, and lastly, TMAL or the tri-math-a-lon competition, is a rigorous math competition with three components, an individual written test, a team written test, and a fast-paced quiz bowl, that tests students in subjects from algebra to calculus.

Students at NCSSM prepared for months, and their work paid off at the national convention, where they placed first and second in their TMAL competition group and performed with notable determination and excellence in the Ten80 and KidWind competitions.

The competitions were not the only activities the competitors participated in; the NCSSM team was intentional about taking advantage of everything the conference offered. The career fair was a big hit among the students. With over 400 exhibitors, from SpaceX and Google to Stanford University and the University of Pennsylvania, companies and schools from all over the nation were represented at the conference, and NCSSM students were sure to take advantage of the outstanding networking opportunities.

Amid the business of competitions and networking, officers of the organization on both campuses had the opportunity to attend an invitation-only luncheon, where they were honored for their leadership and networked with other leaders and organization sponsors, including Chevron. In addition to the leadership luncheon, the graduating seniors in the group participated in a similar luncheon.

The NSBE national conference was a success for NCSSM. Through participation in academic competitions, the career fair, workshops, and luncheons, students took full advantage of the opportunities presented to them, truly embodying the NCSSM motto: “Maius Opus Moveo,” meaning “to accept the greater challenge.”

The Science Olympiad and NSBE convention have concluded, and the enlightened scientists and engineers are now recharging over Spring Break, but the momentum has not yet subsided. NCSSM will send teams off to Envirothon, an environmental education competition, and HOSA — Health Occupations Students of America, a health care-focused academic competition.

We are so excited to see what these amazing students will accomplish, the Science Olympiad and NSBE being just the start to a great competition season.