Two teams of students from Lynch Elementary and four teams from Seaton Elementary School and several alternates have been invited to participate in the annual Michigan Future Problem Solving Program State Bowl at Michigan State University in East Lansing on Saturday, April 17 and Sunday, April 18.
The Lapeer elementary school team will compete with members of 92 of the top teams Michigan.
Lynch team members, Alicia Birkenhauer, Alexis Mosher, Trey Lubonski, Jacob Schlaud, Allison Johnson, Anastasia Mausolf, Rachel Compton Megan Bopra, with alternates, Abby Horning, Steven Romolino, Paul Ankley, and Shelby Metzger, and Seaton team members, Sam Boddy, James Felton, Sierra Wineman, Brittney Potter, Nicole Tomczyk, Carley Heathcock, Sarah Ridenour, Kara Daniels, Hannah Somerville, Jocelyn Jones, Matthew Brey, Zachary Fritz, Brooklyn Withey, Olivia Card, Greg Schabel, and Katie Sinka, with alternate, Lauren Barber, and their coach, Stephen Larzelere-Kellermann travel to MSU.
The State Bowl is the culmination of a yearlong program where students are taught to creatively seek, attack, and solve problems related to projections into the future. An estimated 1,000 Michigan students worked on three problems during the 2009-2010 school year – Invasive Species, Sensory Overload, and Orphaned Children, which were scored and critiqued by trained evaluators.
Based on the third problem, 92 of Michigan FPSP’s teams across three grade divisions (4-6, 7-9, and 10-12) have been invited to participate in the State Bowl. While teams know the general topic of this year’s Bowl – Food Distribution – they will not know the specific nature of the problem they will attempt to solve until the Bowl begins.
Solutions will be evaluated on clearly established criteria, and the top five teams from each division will receive trophies. State Champions will also be invited to represent Michigan at the 2010 International FPS Conference at the University of Wisconsin in LaCross in May. In the past years, Michigan participants have won 25 championships at the International Conference.
