Milpitas High Students Win Awards at Regional Science Competition

Congrats for advancing to state: Darren Lim, Michelle Lin, Forrest Tran, Priscilla Park, Luis Descanzo, Sylvia Yu, Brian Khau, Karen Lam, Giang Ha, Brian Lam, Caroline Zhang, Kewa Jiang, Casey Lee, Tram Nguyen, Kevin Nguyen. 

Rather than spend their Saturdays playing Xbox or watching TV, nearly 50 Milpitas High students have been designing and testing homemade contraptions at school, all in the name of science. 

Their preparation has paid off. On Saturday, one local team qualified for state finals, and that team and two others from Milpitas High beat a dozen high schools at the Bay Area Regional Science Olympiad in a quarter of the 24 events.

Some events were knowledge-based events, such as ornithology (bird calls) and disease detectives, where students try to solve a food-borne illness. Others were hands-on, such as the lightweight towers made of balsa wood that can hold at least 15 kilograms. In that event, the Milpitas High teams placed second, third and fourth–losing to Mission San Jose, but beating Los Gatos and Mountain View High.

Three science teachers—Letta Meyer, Roberto Alvelais and April Hong—have served as advisers for the students. On Friday night, as everyone made last-minute preparations, the classrooms were littered with backpacks and contraptions, pizza boxes and Costco food supplies.

"They do research on their own," said chemistry teacher Alvelais. "We just guide them."

Many of the subjects, such as bird calls, are not taught at the high school, but kids have an official guidebook and the Internet to figure it out. And in many cases, Milpitas High teams placed, as they did taking first and second in the bird call event against other high schools.

Meyer, also a chemistry teacher, said this was Milpitas High's fourth year in the competition and that Principal Ken Schlaff has been supportive from the beginning.

"He said, 'That's what I want at our school, high-ranking competition teams,'" said Meyer. 

The first year, 10 students went.

"We kind of went in pretty naive," she said of their first experience in the competition. This fall, the students began recruiting and reached their highest number of 45 (each team has 15) with alternates to spare. They began practicing every other Saturday, and then, as the date drew closer, just about every Saturday.

The top four schools from the regional competition will go on to the state finals in Fresno. Milpitas High's delegation will be 15 students. 

"Look how much our kids are learning," said Alvelais. Managing projects and people are skills that they will carry with them into the workplace, he said, in addition to training them to develop autonomy and self-reliance.

And there's also team spirit.

You'll see that Milpitas High spearheads all the fun at events such as the science competition, said Meyer, with games like elbow tag.

"They cheer for everybody. A lot of that comes down from the Trojan Olympics," she said. "We don't boo others. That's not Milpitas style."

Russell Middle School also had a team competing in the middle school division of the Bay Area Regional Science Olympiad.