Engage In Practice: Hosting Math Competitions In College Of Engineering

For most people, the countdown round was easily the most intense and exciting part of thecompetition. It gave people a feeling of competing in a sport event, a different image from thesteroid type of nerdy students doing math. Many people, including students, parents, and coachesjoined MATHCOUNTS because of the excitement of the countdown round competition.Once the countdown round was over, the trophies were handed out to the top teams andindividuals. The students qualified to the state competition were announced. The tally sheetsshowing the school results were handed to the coaches. The competition usually ended around3pm.Service activities as part of engineering curriculumFor chapter competition, the Coordinator recruited around 50 engineering students, mostlyfreshmen, as volunteers to help the competition. More than half of them served as graders in asecure grading room. Others served as proctors. A handful helped to check in the competingstudents as they arrived in the morning.The most challenging task rested with the graders. Each year, they received training from thelead grader, a Coordinator from another chapter. The graders were divided into many teams oftwo so that the same paper could be graded twice to ensure accuracy. Occasionally, discrepancyoccurred and the two would verify and make corrections. Once the grading was completed andverified, the scores were recorded on a tally sheet and passed on to a designated grader forentering into the scoring software.Once all grading was completed, the tally sheets were examined to determine the top teams andindividuals. The results were verified with the rankings from the grading software. Sometimes,discrepancy occurred, and mistakes were corrected before finalizing the results. The entiregrading work had to be completed before the afternoon program.Our engineering students enjoyed the intense grading process. Many of them mentioned that theywere amazed at the math talents exhibited among the middle school students. Most of themacknowledged that they themselves were not be able to solve many of the math problems. Duringthe course of several hours, many graders developed emotional attachment to the students theywere grading and started to root for them as the results were tabulated on the whiteboard, a funexperience at the end of an intense grading process.Among the volunteers, proctors were the ones interacted with the competing middle schoolstudents. They followed the schedule, handed out the competition paper, read the rules ofcompetition, started the competition, collected paper once completed, and handed the paper tothe grading room. Our engineering students enjoyed this process by acting as “professors” givingout the “test” instead of taking one. The proctoring process also brought back memory of theirown experiences as middle school students several years ago.The chapter competition started in the morning by a handful of volunteers checking in thearriving students. They verified the spelling of the names and handed out the lunch tickets, t-

shirts, and other marketing materials. This part of the work usually completed within one hour.Many engineering students continued their service as graders or proctors so that they could earnmore service hours.In our chapter, the competition was conducted by three Coordinators, one as the lead grader inthe grading room, one responsible for training all volunteers, and one interfaced with thecoaches. During the coach meeting, the Coordinator encouraged more participation and handedout the participation certificates. The Coordinator also answered questions and addressedconcerns from the coaches of the participating schools.The volunteers were vital part of the competition. They were the ones that actually running thecompetition. In some chapters, the Coordinators were struggling to find enough people to serveas proctors and graders. Sometimes, they were short of volunteers and had to settle for parents tohelp. This was not an ideal situation since the parents could see information about their owncompeting kids. Remedies were made to minimize the potential breach of the competition rules,such as not allowing the parents to grade papers from schools of their own kids. Nevertheless,this was still not ideal since some parents knew the results before they were announced in theafternoon program and could pass to the students prematurely, even being told not to do so.In our chapter, we recruited adequate number of engineering students so that we neverencountered such issue. The main reason we were able to recruit adequate volunteers lied in theway we designed our engineering curriculum [5].To graduate from our engineering programs, all students were required to complete a one unitcourse called Engineering Service. In this course, there was no classroom meeting scheduled.Instead, each registered student needed to volunteer 30 hours of community services. Onceregistered, the students had two years to complete the course. Most students followed therecommendation and started this course during their first year in the engineering program.This course, and the graduation requirement, not only ushered students into various activitiesserving the community but also instilled some disciplines in students who needed to juggle theirbusy class schedule and the other activities. Students also reflected later that this course addedthe needed breaks for otherwise a brutal first year.Common engineering service activities our students engaged through this course included localcounty science fair, school district STEM events, tutoring to fellow students, and many others.However, the most popular service opportunity for most students was the annualMATHCOUNTS competition, simply due to the large number of students involved. It was alsothe most convenient one since it was on campus (travel not needed). For many students, findingopportunities and serving for 30 hours within two years presented a challenge. MATHCOUNTSadded a convenient option. The students only needed to work for half a day on a Saturday. Everyyear, once the MATHCOUNTS was announced, the 50 slots were filled within a week.

State MATHCOUNTS CompetitionDue to its success in hosting chapter competition, the state MATHCOUNTS governing boarddecided four years ago to move the state competition from its previous location (hosted since thebeginning and for more than 30 years) to this university. The state competition had been heldhere twice (switched to online in 2020 and 2021 due to the pandemic).The state competition presented some additional challenges. To accommodate more schools andstudents, a different venue was selected. The state competition was held inside the arena wherecollege basketball games were played. Instead of spreading in many classrooms, all competingstudents were seated together on the arena floor, with four at each table. A front area wasdesignated as the morning check in area and a secure space was allocated as the grading room.To ensure the state competition rules being followed, the Coordinator recruited around 100engineering students. Comparing with chapter competition, the processes of grading andmorning checking in remain the same, with slightly more volunteers involved. The vast majorityof the volunteers played the role of proctors, with one proctor at each table. Each year, about 50tables were setup on the arena floor to accommodate all competing schools and students. Inaddition to the proctors at the tables, additional 10 volunteers were assigned to delivercompetition materials to the tables at the beginning of each round and to the grading room at theend of each round.At the beginning of the afternoon program, the dean of College of Engineering usually gave awelcome remark and then introduced the speaker of the event. At the state MATHCOUNTS, auniversity professor was invited as the feature speaker. The speaker would talk about their ownresearch and its relationship to the middle school math. The easy-to-understand approach, thefascinating contents, and the connection of math to the real life applications were reallyinspiring. The speech was well received by the students, coaches, and parents. For the first year,a physics professor gave a talk on astronomy. For the second year, a female professor from theElectrical and Computer Engineering Department gave a talk and demo on robotics. The funinteraction between the professor and the robot really impressed the audience.Results and ImpactThe process of running the competitions improved over the years. After more than 10 years, wedeveloped a system to ensure the smooth success each time. The competition at our universitywas well regarded by the state governing board and by the MATHCOUNTS national office. Itwas considered one of the best run competitions.The competing middle school students liked this competition due to the venue. It was held at theheart of the beautiful university campus. The well-organized volunteers made it possible toconduct the competition smoothly. In addition, the students really enjoyed the lunch in theuniversity cafeteria.

For our engineering students, they had the chance to meet with the young and future engineeringstudents and played the “professor” roles for one day as proctors and graders. More importantly,they accumulated service hours towards their course completion.From the university point of view, this was an excellent marketing opportunity. We were able toinstill in the young mind the possibility of future engineering careers, and the possibility ofcoming to our university to pursue an engineering degree. We had anecdote facts showing thatsome of the previous competing students enrolled in our engineering programs. Some studentseven asked for and received the 10000 scholarship, as promised by the dean of the college.For some students, participating MATHCOUNTS was actually the very first time they set theirfeet in a university campus. For those 6th, 7th, and 8th graders, the first good impression would goa long way in shaping their mind. To accomplish this, we opened our labs for tour during thecompetition for coaches, parents, and siblings, and at the end of competition for the competingstudents. These labs included many of the research labs in the College of Engineering. Duringthe tour, people saw projects the college students involved, such as the SAE racing car, the 3Dprinting lab, the talking and moving robots, the solar photovoltaic and thermal lab, a largemachine shop, and other labs associated with individual engineering programs.Expansion to high school math competition AMC10 and AMC12After experiencing the fun and exciting MATHCOUNTS competition, the competing studentsmoved on to high school and became interested in and requested for the high school mathcompetitions. A few years after hosting MATHCOUNTS, the College of Engineering started tohost the AMC10 and AMC12 high school math competitions.AMC10 and AMC12 are the two high school math competitions organized annually by MAA(Mathematical Association of America [6]) whose history went all the way back to 1915. TheAMC10 is for grader 10 or younger and AMC12 opens to all students. Each year, over 300,000students around the world participated this challenge math competitions. During the annualFebruary contest, students have 75 minutes to solve 25 multiple choice math problems withoutcalculators. The top performers (top 2.5% for AMC10 and top 5% for AMC12) are invited backin March to participate the next round called AIME (American Invitational Math Exam). This isa 3-hour contest where students try to solve 15 challenge math problems. They are not multiplechoice problems. Instead, students need to figure out the answers and submit them in a specialformat (each answer is a three digit number from 000 to 999, inclusive).The students considered the invitation to participate AIME as a huge honor and a bigaccomplishment in math. The very best students who did well on AIME would then move on tothe next round called USAMO (United States of America Math Olympiad). The top performersof this round were invited to a summer camp for additional intensive training. Among them, thetop six students were selected each year to represent the country to compete at the annual IMO(International Math Olympiad [7]) competition. Historically, USA team had remarkableachievements and was placed the first place in the world numerous times.

Since 2012, the College of Engineering has been hosting this high school math competition forthe local high school students. The number of participating students was about half of thestudents in MATHCOUNTS. The completed competition paper was mailed to MAA for grading.Therefore, there was a delay in announcing the results. This was different from theMATHCOUNTS, where the paper was graded immediately. Therefore, theAMC10/AMC12/AIME contests lacked the excitement as we see in MATHCOUNTS.Nevertheless, students still loved it. It gave them a chance come back to the campus andcontinued to learn math through competition.Lessons learnedMany lessons learned over the years. We shall now outline the major ones that might beinteresting to our ASEE community.Schedule earlyMATHCOUNTS competition venues were always the highly sought-after facilities at theuniversity. To secure the venues, the Coordinator always sat down with the facility manager atthe beginning of each fall semester, six months prior to the competition, to nail down the dates ofcompetitions. We intentionally avoided busy weekend, such as homecoming or any anticipatedlarge university events. Once determined, the dates were secured and marked on the universitymaster calendar.FundraisingAll MATHCOUNTS competitions were organized by the volunteers and the funds needed to beraised to cover the cost. To manage this, we first reduced the cost to a bare minimum of studentlunch and award trophies only. The lunch price was negotiated with the university cafeteria to alower group rate.For fundraising, we reached out to the local branch offices of the professional engineeringsocieties, such as ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers), ASCE (AmericanSociety of Civil Engineers), and IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) andreceived their support. In addition, a local utility company provided generous funds to cover allMATHCOUNTS competitions in its service area. The MATHCOUNTS national office alsoallocated some fund from the registration fees to support the local chapter and state competitions.For the shortfall, the College of Engineering usually stepped in to cover it as part of the outreachand marketing expenditure. In some years when we had surplus, we would purchase t-shirts forthe competition students.ParticipationOur chapter is located in an area where math competition performance was at or below the stateaverage based on the historical data (There had not been a student from the area that was rankedhigh enough to be qualified for the national MATHCOUNTS competition, as far as theCoordinator could recall). Participation was relatively low in comparing with other chapters. To

encourage participation, the Coordinator announced the upcoming competition early, soon aftersecuring the venue. In addition, the Coordinator kept communicating with the school coachesand answered their questions immediately.To get more participation, the Coordinator also emailed middle schools that were not aware ofMATHCOUNTS and invited them to try. Many schoolteachers were busy and sometimes forgotto register for their teams. When the deadline was near, a reminding email was sent. The lastminute registration requests were always accommodated. After the competition, the results werecommunicated to the coaches (and reminding them to come back next year). The participationcertificates with spelling errors were promptly corrected and mailed to the coaches.We had one coach who had participated for over ten years. Many years ago, she was planningnot to continue due to her busy schedule and taking care of her ailing relatives. To commemorateher dedication, a special trophy was awarded to her during the following year award ceremony.The Coordinator also encouraged her to stay on by soliciting parents’ help. A few years later, shefinally retired from her teaching job. Before her leaving, she trained another teacher and theschool’s participation never stopped and continued to this day.To further increase the participation, we also added an option called Unofficial. Those were theschools and the students didn’t register but wanted to have the experiences. They couldparticipate all activities without the eligibility of getting awards, participating the countdownround, and advancing to the state competition.An integral part of our engineering programBased on my experiences (as the Coordinator) in organizing the MATHCOUNTS competitionsin various chapters, many institutions treated this outreach program as something they have todo. Some of them viewed this as a distraction draining resources. They limited their involvementto open and close the venues and not much else. At our institution, hosting math competitions forlocal secondary schools had gradually become an integral part of our college operation. Wereceived strong support from the college and the university. Every year, our engineering studentslearned the opportunities from the announcement and quickly signed up for the serviceopportunities. Overtime, this became a part of our engineering program through our EngineeringService, a course required for graduation.In addition to the College of Engineering, other colleges of the university were also involvedindirectly. For example, during our first time hosting the state competition, we invited a physicsprofessor who gave a talk on astronomy. His easy to follow contents, impressive graphic imagesand videos, and the humorous presentation left a deep impression in those young minds about theexcit

MATHCOUNTS is an annual national math competition program aimed at enhancing problem solving skills for middle school students through a series of math competitions at the local, state, and national levels. Currently in its 38th year [1], MATHCOUNTS is one of the largest and most