YSA Outreach Initiative

This will be year six of the Young Scientist of America outreach initiative, where members of undergraduate organizations assist area middle and high school Science Olympiad coaches with Science Olympiad events. Van Valaskey and Gary Graper, special assistants to the engineering dean for Young Scientists of America outreach coordination, are responsible for connecting the area schools with students from UW-Madison organizations.

Our Engineering School Dean, Paul Peercy, is very supportive of this outreach. He is again willing to help in the following way:

1. The Engineering College will provide vans for student groups from UW-Madison organizations to use to travel to the area schools. For student organizations signing up for specific area middle and high schools, the dates for meeting will be a joint decision between the coach and the student group assigned to that school. For those individuals signing up for a particular afternoon, they will be assigned based on the day they are available and the area school need.
2. The Engineering College will award an organization $10 per hour per person advising or mentoring events prior to the Wisconsin Science Olympiad competition on April 10. Organizations will be awarded $15 per hour per person for advising or mentoring more than 10 hours. Travel time is also included in the hourly rate.

Students running a Rube Goldberg machine

UW-Madison student organization members can help by either serving as an advisor or a mentor to the students. An advisor is primarily responsible for coaching a particular event, which includes being the primary resource person, acquiring needed materials and helping the students stay on task and set goals for future meetings. A mentor is not the primary coach, but helps students stay on task and set goals for future meetings.

If you are a member of a student organization and are interested in getting your organization involved or interested in getting involved individually, communicate with Van Valaskey and Gary Graper by sending an email with your intent to participate to: veval@tds.net. Organizations may request a specific area school needing help with Science Olympiad. Individuals signing up will be assigned to a team based on availability and that team will then travel to an assigned area school.