Franklin Regional receives grant to expand annual Science Olympiad for elementary, middle-school students

Franklin Regional elementary teachers will be up-sizing their annual Science Olympiad in 2022 with the help of a $2,500 grant from the Spectroscopy Society of Pittsburgh.

“We were able to establish an elementary and middle school Science Olympiad program in partnership with the SSP,” said fourth grade teacher Megan Melucci. “And those grants help support competitions within the school districts.”

With a heavy emphasis in recent years on STREAM-based education concepts, the Science Olympiad fit perfectly with the educators’ goals.

The grant — which the district technically received last year, but due to pandemic restrictions wasn’t able to hold the event — will allow Melucci and others to upgrade to what they are calling the “MegaOlympiad,” which will add new stations focused on concepts like ornithology, physics, engineering and more.

“We’re excited about our continued partnership with Franklin Regional,” said, Heather Juzwa 2021-22 SSP president. “We want to share the MegaOlympiad and all its educational benefits with the community.”

Toward that end, SSP officials came to Franklin Regional recently to record a video featuring Melucci, discussing the framework for the program, demonstrating several STREAM station concepts and emphasizing the collaborative efforts that teachers want to foster through the MegaOlympiad.

“We wanted to model our best practices and some our stations, and talk about things like our team spirit awards,” Melucci said.

The SSP is one of two local science societies, along with the Society for Analytical Chemists of Pittsburgh (SACP), which organizes the annual Pittsburgh Conference on Analytical Chemistry and Spectroscopy, or Pittcon, one of the world’s largest science conferences. In fact, it’s been too large to hold in Pittsburgh since the 1960s.

A large part of the conference, organized primarily by volunteers along with a small staff in Wilkins Township, is focused on science education, culminating in Science Week, where several thousand students from the conference’s host city are brought in for educational programs and workshops.

In recent years, Pittcon officials have switched their focus and used proceeds from the conference to fund Science Week activities back home in the Pittsburgh area in addition to the local grants they’ve provided over the years.

Melucci has done presentations for the SSP through Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio, as well as across the country at various Pittcon events, advocating for other schools to realize the benefits of partnering with them.

“It’s just grown year after year,” Melucci said.

For more on the SSP and SACP, including grant information, see ChemistryOutreach.org.