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Math students visit SCSU
By Cory Fechtelkotter
Published:
Thursday, April 3, 2003
Walking through campus Tuesday, SCSU students and faculty may have been surprised by the number of people wandering campus that didn't look quite old enough to be in college. A few, however, were able to recognize it as the annual SCSU Mathematics Competition.
The event was held for its 36th year Tuesday, with over 1000 students attending from high schools and junior highs across the state. The majority of participants were seventh and eight graders. Students attending are chosen through their school, by volunteering or participation in a math league or other math-related organization. The main event was the math test held in the morning, but for many students, the focus was on the many activities made available to them during the day.
"Pretty much, all we do is take a test and then we walk around for awhile," said Ernie Leonard, a seventh grader from Osseo Junior High. "We can go to the gym, food court, arcade, planetarium and a whole bunch of other places. It's a good thing."
"It's a day full of fun," said Jimmy Wang, also a seventh grader from Osseo Junior.
Among the activities, there were tours of the KVSC radio station and an award ceremony for the top performers in the test. Certificates were given to those who finished in the top 15, 10 and five percent and the top three scorers in each grade-level and the top teams according to their composite scores.
Another popular activity was the simultaneous chess exhibition. Ray Bagely of the computer science department competed against up to 24 opponents in chess at the same time.
Kay Bagely, Ray Bagely's wife, was a volunteer at the event. She shared her thoughts on the event and the relevance of chess.
"The purpose of the math competition is to encourage people from surrounding high schools to come in and get acquainted with SCSU and see how wonderful the math and computer science departments really are," Bagely said. "One of the brain building activities considered these days to be really worthwhile is the ability to play chess."
Despite this being the event's 36th year, many SCSU students did not know why the youth were here. However, that may be because the competition has been held on a Saturday in years past.
Barry Bayerl, a teacher from All Saints Peter Paul and Michael School in north St. Cloud commented on the change.
"It has always been a Saturday competition up until this year," he said, "but they've been finding numbers going down drastically over the last six to 10 years. So they decided to try something different to get the numbers back up, so they moved it to a school day. It was down around five or six hundred students last year from a high of 2000, and they have something over 1000 students here today. By having it on a school day, they have been able to raise the number of participants again and get more people out so they can keep it going."
Bayerl went on to comment on the importance of the competition.
"I think it's nice for students this age," he said, "especially the seventh and eighth graders, to begin to see the importance of academics, the importance of putting what you know on the line and challenge yourself and see that there are a lot of people out there interested in doing the same things. It's not just sports and extracurriculars that people are interested in. People want to learn and challenge themselves academically too."
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