I was introduced to OM in the fall of 1990 at my children's elementary school. As soon as I realized that there was a Division for college students, I wanted to start a team at my school. I am chair of the Science Department at a small liberal arts college called Sierra Nevada College at Lake Tahoe in Nevada. Our school is famous for its ski teams and I thought we needed some academic accomplishments to balance this out.
The First Year
I convinced a faculty member to coach the vehicle problem and recruited six top students for the team. It was an extra-curricular activity. I also set out to raise the funds to send the team to Tennessee for the World Finals. I was able to get some donations from trustees and get some money from the President's budget.
The team met sporadically and were able to solve the problem and compete in Tennessee in May of 1991. The overall experience was good, but the coach was burned out and the students didn't show the level of commitment that I had expected. Too many other things had priority for them.
The Following Years
I made some important decisions that first year which have created a successful program ever since. First, I put a line item of $5000 in my department budget for the following year. It got approved. Then, I created a class called "Odyssey of the Mind" in the Science Department that would fill a science distribution requirement. From then on, it was easy to get a coach, because the faculty member who teaches the class gets credit as part of his or her teaching load. It is easy to recruit students, because they get credit. Because they are graded, they have a large commitment to OM. Part of the course requirements are to compete in all competitions - regional, state, and worlds. By making OM a course, there is a regular meeting time and place for team members and the commitment lasts for the complete spring semester and beyond until World Finals. I have since gotten the line item upped to $6000, which is adequate to send a team of six and a coach to the East Coast. Each year, we have more than seven who want to participate and use grades and teacher recommendations to select the team members.
How to Sell the Administration on this idea:
Sierra Nevada College uses our OM successes in many ways:
HOW SNC USES OUR OM SUCCESSES
These pages are produced by, and are the responsibility of Sierra Nevada College Odyssey of the Mind, a chartered association of OM Association Inc. Since these pages are not
reviewed by OM Association, Inc., which administers the Odyssey of the Mind program, it is not
responsible for their contents. These pages should not be viewed as authoritative for any information that is not specific to SNCOM activities.
Information about the Odyssey of the Mind Program, its problems, problem
definitions, problem clarifications, terms of participation and other program-specific
information is available only from OM Association, Inc. Its home page is linked to this
one: OM Association, Inc.
All competition rules in the Odyssey of the Mind School Program Rulebook apply on the
Internet ... be particularly aware of the rules concerning outside assistance
and problem clarifications.
