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"Odyssey" of a College Team

by Nathalie Espinol
03/04/2009

“Welcome to another edition of Conspiracy Theater,” announces narrator “Ross Sterling” as he walks onto the stage in a dapper top hat and vest. This epic episode is set in the Mesozoic period when earth was still one big continental Pangea- represented here by a foam board Pangea set against a blue bedsheet ocean.

A shaggy outfitted Bigfoot and bearded Homosapian, complete with discreetly placed paper leaves, lament the changing climate of their planet. Before too long, Dinosaur, Pegasus and the Lochness Monster join the story and soon the characters have to band together (or fall apart) to escape the catastrophic flood that ensues when Pangea breaks; which it literally does, thanks to some PVC piping and an air compressor, hidden behind the bedsheet.

Luckily, the inspired Homo Sapian has invented a wheel and rides off to safety. Everyone else was not so lucky- or were they?

“Conspiracy theorists debate over who made it out alive. Does Bigfoot stalk the continents of North America? Is Pegasus a mere myth? Is Nessie floating in the lakes of Scotland?” proposes Sterling’s booming voice.

Meanwhile, the one unquestionable survivor, Homosapian, comes on stage for a final appearance.

“As for Homo Sapian, he’s still around today,” explains the narrator, “with a few evolutionary changes of course,” accordingly, the Homo Sapian holds up a picture of Bob Dylan that incites a burst of laughter from the audience. And….TIME. The end.

No, this isn’t a Saturday night improv show, or a couple of confused college kids on an acid trip- this production is actually educational, this is Odyssey of the Mind.

“This is like the weirdest program ever,” says 8-year Odyssey veteran and University of Georgia sophomore, Frances Micklow. “It’s really hard to explain. You have to see it to really get it.”

The eight-minute skit the six students acted out was the UGA team’s 2008 World Final award winning solution to the given problem, aptly entitled Dinostories:

What might have happened to the dinosaurs that existed so many years ago? In a humorous performance, teams will present their original theory of what caused the dinosaurs to become extinct. The performance will include a dinosaur, a replica of the same dinosaur, an animal that is not a dinosaur, and a technical simulation of the team's "extinction theory." At least part of the performance will take place in a setting from the Triassic, Jurassic, or Cretaceous periods.

Not only did the team have to incorporate every element of the problem into their solution, but they also had to create the costumes and set using a stringent budget of $150.

On top of monetary constraints, this was also only one of the three distinct skits the team had to write and put together within the two weeks leading up to World Finals.

“We were working up to the hour before we went on stage,” explains Micklow.

But, thanks to “lots of coffees and lots of hail Marys,” and maybe a dash of ingenuity, creativity, and unquestionable passion, Micklow says the group won a first place gold medal in each of the three problems they took on.

This respectable championship run proves all the more impressive considering that the team had never gone to the World Finals or, for that fact, even worked together.

“A couple of us have been in teams before, but we pretty much grew up competing against each other,” explains Amanda Hackney, the delightful Pegusus, 15-year Odyssey pro, and the Division IV representative on the state board. “We called ourselves the Dream Team because it was all the people we had competed against in high school, coming together and collaborating. None of us had won at World, and we came together to win.”

Each of the seasoned veterans brought their individual strengths to the team, but it was the group’s indefinable je ne sais quoi, that helped them beat out 25 other college teams.

“We became friends really quickly- we just got comfortable and then could be creative with each other,” explains the innovative Homosapian Henry Detwetlier, a sophomore at Georgia State University. “The stars just aligned for that.”

But what is Odyssey of the Mind? OotM is an international non-profit educational program that asks participants to create creative solutions for given problems, with participants ranging from kindergarten to the collegiate level. Micklow describes the program as a creative problem-solving competition akin to the academic bowls and science Olympiads of high school, but with a twist.

“It’s a program that fosters original thinking outside of the box,” she says.

Terry Bardagjy, another OotM team member and UGA sophomore, agrees: “It’s not saying that inside the box is bad it’s just saying it’s common—[OotM asks] can you do anything better?”

Therefore, there are no actual “right” answers or “wrong” answers in the competitions- simply, there are just answers, each of which individual teams present in their own unique way.

“The rules are really basic- that’s why it’s so universalized and why they can do it in so many different countries and so many different ages,” continues Bardagjy. “They give you a page’s worth of guidelines and you follow them, but you’re supposed to get as far away from them [as possible] without violating them.”

This definitive beyond-the-textbook element of the program is what makes OotM so distinctive and different from most other educational programs. Relishing the ridiculous and languishing in the ludicrous, the program pushes kids to be silly, take bold risks and—most importantly—stand behind their choices.

“If you’re a standard everyday thinker, you’re going to hate it,” explains Problem 5 coordinator and former UGA competitor, Kimberly Wise. “That annoying kid that always raised his hand in class—we’re looking for that kid, a kid with a different view of the world.”

After experimenting with creative problem-solving activities with his industrial design students, Dr. C. Samuel Micklus—a professor of technology at Rowan University of New Jersey between 1968 and 1991—began the program in 1978. Micklus presented his class with a basic hypothetical problem, asking them to cross a lake. The catch? They couldn’t make a boat.

Encouraging his students to take a creative leap, Micklus pushed them to produce innovative solutions that were original and unique. Today, the program has grown to encompass thousands of teams throughout the United States and from around the world.

Organized into four divisions by educational level, the program is most popular amongst the first three divisions that cover elementary, middle and high school students. While collegiate level teams in Division IV advance automatically to the World Finals, each of the lower divisions compete in four regional competitions and one state tournament to win a spot on the international stage.

All the competitions culminate with a World Finals event in the spring that can include about 30,000 to 40,000 people, encompassing coaches, parents, participants and judges.
Wise estimates that about 25 Division IV teams from around the world competed in the Finals last year. About 20 of the teams were from the U.S., some of them based in bigger colleges like UGA and the University of Michigan, while others come from some of the more obscure universities.

To be eligible for Division IV, a student simply has to be enrolled in an accredited college or university, so oftentimes, students from different schools will band together to form a team.

Compared to the other divisions, the collegiate level is the smallest as the annual competitions held in May oftentimes conflict with college finals or students simply cannot commit the time that OoTM deserves. “By the time you get to college, people are strung out in so many different directions that it’s hard for teams to meet up,” says Betsey Zachry, the regional co-director and OotM volunteer since 1985.

More often than not, the financial strain of the competition can be the biggest deterrent for potential participants. Although college teams can receive a few hundred dollars from the state, it can cost anywhere from $500 to $1000 for each team member to go to the World Finals. Therefore, students are fueled by a passionate desire to participate and little else as the program gives no cash rewards of any kind to competition winners.

“It’s funny, because you think after all that time that you put in and all of that energy, and the money you pump in, you think that you want more,” says Micklow. “But winning this past year was completely worth every dime, every party I missed, every 24- hour period I spent [working on the problems].”

Micklow’s and her teammates’ passion towards Odyssey is reminiscent of another former participant—a tenacious trailblazer that was determined to create an OoTM team at the University of Georgia—Richard Wise.

The sporadic and organic history of the UGA OotM team begins in the 1996-1997 school year, when Wise, a seasoned Odyssey veteran, decided that he wanted to continue competing in his freshman year of college. He started by calling some friends and recruiting a team from those that seemed interested. That year, six team members went on to the World Finals at the University of Maryland, coming in third for their problem.

The second year saw a big jump with 12 students signing on so the team divided to tackle three problems. To pay the travel costs for going to World Finals, Wise took it upon himself to raise the necessary funds. Pleading his case to RHA, student activities and various hall councils, Wise managed to come up with the $5000 the team needed.

“I ran around like a maniac because nobody would give more than a couple of hundred dollars at a time, so to raise enough money I had to go to a bunch of different sources,” says Wise. “I was pretty much on my own, I had help here and there, but that was a really exhausting year—I just about collapsed at the end of it.”

But his efforts were not in vain, and his team went on to win a silver medal.
“They raised the bar,” says Lisa Hackney, elementary school teacher and vice-president of the Georgia OotM state board. “I saw some of their performances and they were out-of-the-box—[just] awesome. Richard’s teams were just very polished.”

Division IV has been active in the state for about 20 years, but until the UGA team in 1996-97, teams had become somewhat complacent, relying simply on their automatic spot at World to win them a medal. “Georgia kind of set a precedent for what the college competition could be,” says Wise.

In his final year, Wise won something better than a medal, competing with his future wife, Kimberly. After Richard graduated, the future Mrs. Wise, along with other OotM team members, would go on to continue competing and even winning, under the UGA banner.

“I was really proud of the fact that I started that organization and that it kept going after I graduated, and that they won,” says Wise, who is still an active volunteer for OotM. “But my motivation while I was in school was just [that] I really enjoyed working on it each year.”

The team’s last year of competition was 2004, followed by a three-year hiatus where no OotM team existed at all. “My team graduated and we just never recruited,” says Kimberly Wise. “We were just such a close knit team that we didn’t even think about the fact that we would need to recruit people to continue it.”

Micklow explains that the program needs experienced, and driven, Odyssey participants to get a team off the ground and running. “It takes people…who know about it, to continue it,” explains Micklow. “It’s hard to just hand off. It’s not exclusive, it just [takes] that desire.”

And Micklow was not the only one with that special desire. Hackney, currently a senior at West Georgia, also wanted to start a team with her long-time friend and teammate, Nicky Oliver.

“Amanda was the initial instigator but we both wanted to compete,” says Oliver.

With some prodding from the Wises who knew the girls through past Odyssey competitions, Hackney, Oliver and Micklow joined forces and recruited four more former OoTM participants to pick up the UGA torch that Richard had ignited almost a decade ago.

“It did feel like we were continuing a legacy,” says Dicy Saylor, a UGA sophomore that competed on last year’s team. “It was like a resurrection. It was also convenient because we didn’t have to jump through hoops because [the former UGA team] had already laid the foundation for us.”

Eventually, Kimberly’s younger brother, Joseph Hawkins, Henry Detwetiler, and even Frances’ father, Keith—a graduate student at West Georgia—jumped on board to complete the seven member team.

This spring, with some of the former members being unable to compete, the UGA team is rebuilding.

“We have about ten people from the University,” says Micklow. “I’m hoping to expand it. I’ve talked to a few other people who seem like they would be interested.”

With such an enviable track record, high hopes lie on Micklow and Bardagjy’s ability to incite some much needed interest on the UGA campus—a task that may be harder to solve than any problem they’ve faced thus far. As many former Odyssey participants are oblivious that the program extends into college, while other college students are oblivious to the program’s overall existence, perhaps one of the team’s biggest obstacles this year will be raising awareness.

“I think if people gave it a chance, gave it a shot and explored it a little bit, I think they would be hooked,” explains Micklow. “I mean I’ve been hooked for seven years [and] I know that I will always be involved with Odyssey.”

Right now, the Division IV members are assisting with the lower divisions, training younger kids and judging at various regional OoTM tournaments. Yet wherever they go, a palpable buzz is following them.

Like their precedent-setting predecessors, last year’s UGA team has a respectable reputation for putting on original, creative, and, best of all, award-winning performances.

Lisa Hackney says that she has young participants constantly promising a bigger and better show than the UGA team and that, in general, more of her students seem interested in OotM. She envisions the state program growing and becoming intimidating competitors to Texas, New York and Pennsylvania teams, the three states where Odyssey is most prominent.

“I think the UGA team really spearheaded [this excitement about OotM],” says Hackney. “The word’s out- people are talking about it. The gauntlet has been thrown, and that’s great—that’s what we want.”