UCS teams qualify for international Destination Imagination competition

It will be destination Knoxville for local students who qualified for the "global finals" of Destination Imagination during state competition over the weekend.

After winning honors for creativity, teamwork and problem solving in local, state and regional tournaments, perennial powerhouse Utica Community Schools (UCS) continued its winning ways and will send three teams to the international competition. 

Switzer Elementary, Malow Junior High and Burr/Dekeyser Elementary have earned the right to travel to Destination Imagination's Global Finals, the largest creative thinking and problem solving competition in the world, which will be held at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville May 21-24. 
To find out more about these UCS teams and their creative solutions, please visit their website: www.KIDsforSTEM.org

The state competition was Saturday, April 5 at Central Michigan University, with 12 teams competing from Utica Community Schools. These 3 winning UCS teams will be among more than 8,000 students representing more than 1,250 teams that will advance to Global Finals.Each year, Destination Imagination presents "challenges" from which teams of up to seven students can choose to compete at the elementary, middle or secondary level. This year there were six, open-ended challenges that require young people to apply Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM), in addition to improvisation, theater arts, writing, project management, communication, innovation, teamwork and community service.

Below is a list of the Destination Imagination challenges: 

• Dig In -- The technical challenge has teams design and build equipment to detect objects that are in a hiding place, and move them across a finish line as well as create and present a story about technology that detects things that humans can't find on their own.
• UCS’s Malow Junior High, 2nd place State Tournament, 1st place regional.At the regional tournament, the Malow team also won the prestigious “Da Vinci” award for creativity. Their story has an Anti-Bullying message. Their presentation delighted the judges by taking this serious subject and presenting it in such a way that meaningful and humorous at the same time.
• Going to Extremes -- The scientific challenge has students depict an "extreme environment" in the Earth's universe, present a story about organisms that have adapted to the environment and develop adaptive gear that is demonstrated through technical methods.
• Laugh ART Loud -- The fine arts/theatrical challenge has students research a foreign artist, present theatrically a three-panel comic strip representing the artist's work, a "caption contraption" and an "ARTifact" based on the artist's work.
• Switzer Elementary, 1st place State Tournament, 1st place regional.
• Pandemonium -- The improv challenge involves creation of a five-minute improvisational skit that shows interaction between a current character and one from the past and how they use occupational skills of their era to address pandemonium.
• The Tension Builds -- The engineering challenge has each team build a structure that will be tested against two forces at the same time, design a prop that is assembled during the presentation and create a story in which a tension that threatens stability is overcome.
• Burr & Dekeyser Elementary, 2nd place State Tournament, 1st place regional.
• Pitch & Play -- The service learning/community outreach challenge has the team select a community need and carry out a project that address that need, using play to meet the goal of the project. There also must be an "elevator pitch" used to enlist a community partner and a live presentation that features the project.