High Point Students Excel at World Finals

WANTAGE-As the spring sports season winds down in Sussex County, a story of small town triumph over adversity begins to dominate the discussion around the Little League field. Oddly enough, its one that does not involve a round ball. Designed and orchestrated with a theme of "Mission: Impossible," the team of High Point High School students from Brian Drelick's Power, Energy, and Transportation Technology class relied on their sound engineering skills to finish sixteenth at the 26th Annual Odyssey of the Mind Competition World Finals. A total of 41 teams representing 36 states and 18 countries, some from as far away as Kazakhstan, competed in the events. Odyssey of the Mind, according to its founders, "is an international educational program that provides creative problem-solving opportunities for students from kindergarten through college. Kids apply their creativity to solve problems that range from building mechanical devices to presenting their own interpretation of literary classics. They then bring their solutions to competition on the local, state, and World level." For the students from High Point, the competition began early in the school year when Drelick introduced this idea to his Level III class of technology students, which consisted of juniors and seniors. Drelick presented them with a challenge that he found through Odyssey of the Mind. Yearly, beginning in the fall, schools register for the program and choose the challenges they want to participate in. The challenges, ranging from those that test dramatic and acting skills, literature interpretation, to highly specialized robotics, are posted and strict guidelines must be followed in order for the teams to be eligible for competition in the spring. For example, each challenge comes with a spending cap that the teams may not exceed in their preparations. For the team from High Point, that cap was a mere $140 dollars. That figure, when looking at the challenge the team chose, is enough to raise a few eyebrows. The students in Drelick's class were given the challenge labeled "StuntMobiles." In this challenge, the teams were to build self-propelled vehicles that would maneuver through 5 obstacle courses in eight minutes. The courses varied from a straight run in which the car was required to push a balloon onto a board studded with screws and mounted to a wall at the end of the run. Others were more difficult, and required that the vehicle be able to climb and maneuver over and around obstacles. All the while, the students could not use any form of remote control, and the tasks had to be accomplished within the allotted 8 minutes. To add to the drama of the competition, advisors like Drelick and his fellow teacher, Dan Muller, cannot aid the students during the competition and are forced to sit in a remote corner of the competition area. "You pull your hair out for those eight minutes," Drelick said. Additionally, the competition at the regional, state, and national level all require the students to complete a spontaneous task in which they have four minutes to solve a problem that they have never seen before, using only the materials given to them. Getting to the nationals wasn't something that the students initially believed they could do. "I never anticipated it going this far. I wanted a competition that was somewhat local and I found this, which was local at first," Drelick said about how his students became involved. "After they placed second at Regionals (held in Piscataway), they truly believed they could win states (held in Ewing), which they ended up doing." Naturally, says Drelick, the students did not finish the competition they way they wanted to. In the end, the perils of shipping delicate materials trumped the ingenuity of the group. They carried the vehicles that they constructed, made to look like miniature Audi's, on the plane with them, but one of the mechanisms for propelling the cars was stored underneath during the flight, and was damaged in transit. Drelick's group decided to go with what they had during the competition. "Even though we didn't finish where we wanted to, the value of the experience exceeds the competition itself," Drelick said. Odyssey of the Mind was begun by Dr. C. Samuel Micklus, then a professor at Rowan University of New Jersey. He began toying with the idea that creative problem-solving techniques might better serve his industrial design students. By requiring them to solve several problems using thought that came from their own motivation, he found that the students often took greater risks and solved more complex problems. At the heart of Odyssey of the Mind, says Micklus on the Odyssey website, is "an excitement about learning and an excitement about themselves and their ability to achieve what others might say is impossible." Drelick took this same idea and, along with the rest of the Department of Engineering and Technological Studies at High Point, created classes that push the limits of traditional industrial arts. Gone are courses like small-engine repair. In its place are courses like Drelick's Power, Energy, and Transportation Technology. The class that made it to Nationals, the level III class, was the first group of students to benefit from the new format instituted three years ago. "Our emphasis is on hands-on learning where we can incorporate content and real-world technologies," Drelick said. "Competitions like this one really accentuate what we do in class by bridging together a lot of things. We are doing more than just standard ‘teacher talks --students listen' here. These kids are motivated."