oct08b.indd Kristine Fowler Jeopardy in the library The University of Minnesota Library’s science quiz bowl A. This intramural tournament brings it thus serves as the kick-off for IT Week. The hundreds of engineering students to the Uni- library hums with activity as teams pass to and versity of Minnesota Libraries on a Sunday for from different game rooms, clutching tourna- fun, friendly competition, and prizes. ment schedules, discussing answers given or Q. What is the Science Quiz Bowl? missed, speculating about their competition, and sporting the occasional team headband Game night at the library has a whole new or mascot (beanies, disco balls, even a plant). meaning at the University of Minnesota The team names indicate creativity and of- (UMN). Rather than PS2 and Wii remotes, ten science jokes: Future MacGyvers of the the players wield elec- World, The P-Branes, tronic buzzers and golf The Überdorks, Psi Phi. pencils as they speed Honors go back and to answer science quiz forth between teams questions. In a high-en- o f u n d e rg r a d s a n d ergy tournament similar graduate students, with to “Jeopardy!”, science the most trash talked and engineering students when a teaching as- show off their knowl- sistant played against edge and quick recall as teams of his Physics they compete for prizes 101 students. Breadth of and the glory of winning knowledge is rewarded, the intramural Science since two-thirds of the Quiz Bowl. questions cover all ar- The UMN Science and eas of science and the Engineering and Math- other third ranges from ematics Libraries began hip-hop artists to the hosting the Science Quiz Roman Empire. Bowl in 2004 as part of The students nail IT Week, an annual event for students in the questions on centripetal acceleration, Institute of Technology (IT), the UMN college iodine’s atomic number, Jupiter’s moons, of physical sciences and engineering. Its pop- and the fracture characteristics of obsidian. ularity has surged from those fi rst 12 teams: The short toss-up questions require speed, in 2008, 34 teams of four students played a to be the first player to ring the buzzer; the double-elimination tournament, 66 games bonus questions require teamwork, to agree altogether, with a cadre of librarians running on answers for all three parts. Most are an- up to 10 games simultaneously. (Results and swered correctly (in increasing proportion as a description of play are available at sciweb. Kristine Fowler is mathematics librarian and science quiz lib.umn.edu/sciencequizbowl/.) bowl director at the University of Minnesota, e-mail: The tournament is always held on a Sun- fowler@math.umn.edu day afternoon to avoid conflicts with classes; © 2008 Kristine Fowler One of the Quiz Bowl teams: “Team 2.” C&RL News October 2008 526 mailto:fowler@math.umn.edu teams advance) with wrong guesses earning laughs or groans. Why play? The tournament is great fun but also accom- plishes quite serious purposes. Hosting an event that celebrates knowledge emphasizes the library’s role in the campus’s intellectual life. The students obviously enjoy playing in it, and the positive experience they have with the library is a very relevant outreach activ- ity. The librarians who fill the Alex Trebek role in moderating games also have a positive inter- action with the players, experiencing their humor and camaraderie as well as their smarts. Another major outcome is collaboration with various campus enti- ties that plan the other ac- tivities during IT Week; the library is now recognized as a significant partner in the success of this student- centered tradition. The library explicitly devotes its efforts to fur- thering these goals. Par- ticipation in IT Week was the original impetus and remains a priority, so we integrate as fully as possible into that struc- ture. After setting the tournament date to coincide with IT Week, it has been impor- tant—and nontrivial—to get the Science Quiz Bowl included in the schedules showing the whole week’s activities. The IT Week student organizers provided visibility in a new way when they chalked the quad sidewalks with Science Quiz Bowl ads. Reinforcing the ties between events, the tournament champions win tickets to the IT Week Banquet (even if one suspects the university bookstore gift cards are the more popular part of the prize package). Coordinated scheduling has also had benefits, such as when the champion- ship game immediately preceded Poker Night in the room next door, allowing the poker The “Physics Is My Pet” team. players to swell our audience. The associate dean for student services has come to expect our invitations to serve as the scientifi c judge for the championship. As a result of these persistent efforts, the tournament director now joins various student groups and the IT Dean’s Office on the IT Week planning team. Its regular meetings produced unexpected pay-offs this year: candidates in the IT King and Queen competition earned points for attending the championship game, and the college’s outreach officer volunteered as a game moderator. The deeper relationships between the library and the college lead- ership are clearly car- rying over into other areas. From Rihanna to the Simpsons The intellectual aspect of the Science Quiz Bowl depends on the quality of the ques- tions. Fortunately we can buy questions; though significant editing and rearrang- ing are needed to develop the desired science concentration, this saves considerable time compared to writing them from scratch. The students are able to answer most but not all of the questions, which seems the ideal level of difficulty for a friendly tournament. The players all belong to the physical science and engineering departments, but life science questions are not excluded—partly not to further reduce our stock of usable questions, but also to acknowledge the interdisciplin- ary nature of science. The students enjoy the general knowledge questions as well, especially the pop culture ones. Correctly identifying one of Rihanna’s songs may gen- erate a little teasing, but science geeks are always proud to get “Simpsons” questions. Interestingly, graduate students haven’t had October 2008 527 C&RL News a consistent advantage over undergraduates. The grad students often put together a team from a single department, which can limit their versatility, but they clearly appreciate having this recreational opportunity. We help students connect with each other by offering a teammate-matching service; usually only two teams per year are formed this way, but we’re happy to make sure those eight students get a chance to participate. Providing a positive experience for the students is a core principle. The bottom line is to get the basic organization right, with detailed planning well in advance in order for everything to run smoothly on game day. Room reservations must be made as soon as the date is set, since we reinforce the library’s role as host by holding the tournament entire- ly within our building, even when this means running games in group study rooms. The double-elimination structure was also selected with the students’ experience in C&RL News October 2008 528 More tips for running a tournament If you’re considering running a similar tournament, here are a few additional tips on logistics: • The required investments are staff time, especially for the planning coor- dinator and the marketing staff, and a moderate expenditure for questions, refreshments, prizes, and perhaps buzzer systems, but these costs can be adjusted to suit almost any budget, depending on tournament size and other conditions. • Questions are available for purchase from the College Bowl Company ( www. collegebowl.com/home.asp ) or National Academic Quiz Tournaments, LLC ( www. naqt.com/practice-questions.jsp; we use the Collegiate Intramural packets). An alternative is to have librarians contribute questions from their subject areas. • You may need to rearrange pur- chased questions to meet your specifi c format and/or subject focus. For half- hour games, 15 toss-up questions plus 15 three-part bonus questions is about right. Question vendors should be able to provide the approximate subject break- down of their packets, if you plan to use only a subset. • Teams should register ahead of time so you can set the schedule, even though the delay may give a few no-shows. You may need to cap the number of teams, depending on the number of available rooms, buzzer systems, moderators, etc. • Tournament charts by format and number of teams are readily available on the Web, such as at www.collegebowl. com/pub/tournaments.asp. • Several models of lock-out buzzer sys- tems are available; see a list at www.case. edu/orgs/trivia/internet/equip.html (Quik Pro is perhaps the most common brand seen at tournaments). • You don’t have to buy all the buzzer systems you’ll need, since there’s a cul- ture of lending among quiz teams; if your library bought one or two systems, you could probably borrow a few more for your tournament from any nearby college bowl teams—and they’ll be happy to bor- row yours occasionally. • Prizes don’t have to be lavish; book- store gift cards are appreciated (and, we were told, better than the t-shirts awarded for intramural athletic tournaments). • Staff should be assigned to take care of nongame tasks such as team registrations, photos, and refreshments; unless the tour- nament is small, the game moderators and tournament director will be too busy. • Team name table-tents are helpful not only during games but also in identifying photos afterwards. • If you’ll want to use photos of the teams and games on the tournament Web site or in future publicity, your institution may require you to get the students’ permis- sion, e.g., through a photo release form. mind, since it means that every team gets to play at least twice, and then the schedule is designed to maximize the number of simulta- neous games in order to minimize wait times between games. We sent HTML e-mails to eligible students, and subject-related student groups recruited participants. The tournament director promptly answers all their inquiries (IM is good for this!) and confirms team reg- istrations. The attention to communication continues by providing copies of the rules and the tournament and are very grateful for our runner-up prizes! Hopefully we will be back next year.” The librarians have a great time, too Running the games is fun, although it takes practice to feel comfortable asking the ques- tions while keeping score and watching the time. The tournament director runs training games so moderators can practice their role and also act as contestants, which improves both their comfort level and the consistent application of rules schedule, and fol- on game day. Some lowing up afterward moderators prefer to ask for sugges- to read the ques- tions and to share tions beforehand, the much-appreci- especially to prac- ated team photos. tice pronouncing sci- O n g a m e d a y , ence terms. Luckily, the moderators and we haven’t noticed other staff help keep any players trying to the tone light and sneak a look at the positive, as appro- questions yet! priate for a friendly As the tournament intramural tourna- has grown, we’ve ment, but we also follow consistent guidelines to ensure a fair competition. For teams that keep winning, it becomes a very long afternoon, so we provide light refreshments periodically in a convenient lounge. The overall mix seems to work—the students enjoy themselves and are very appreciative. The feedback they provide is overwhelm- ingly positive, regardless of how well their team did, as these representative messages show: “The tournament has been a blast so far!” “Though our team only completed the first two rounds, we thoroughly enjoyed our- selves and appreciated the quality and range of questions as well as your reading of them.” “I just wanted to say that we had a great time at the Science Quiz Bowl and we are looking forward to competing again next year! . . . I really liked the ratio of science to general knowledge questions.” “On behalf of my team, I wanted to thank you again for your hard work in running a successful Quiz Bowl this year—we had a great time participating enlisted more sup- port staff and student workers to handle the refreshments, photos, and other practical tasks, since the moderators are busy with the games themselves and the tournament director is also monitoring game results, resolving challenges to the accuracy of the questions or the applica- tion of the rules, and so on. The work pays off in the enjoyable, exciting interaction with the players, seeing students at their cooperative, competitive, and intellectual best. An associ- ate university librarian who has volunteered repeatedly as a moderator said, “I miss having this kind of contact with students.” The Science Quiz Bowl has proved to be a very successful event at the UMN libraries, providing a fruitful nexus for collaboration with other campus units and engaging many students in a rewarding intellectual activity. That’s a good answer. Thanks to all the UMN librarians and staff who have made five years of the Science Quiz Bowl possible. October 2008 529 C&RL News