College bowl team headed to regionals

Five Rose freshmen, comprising the Rose-Hulman College Bowl team, will be participating at the regional competition at Notre Dame on February 23 and 24. The team is comprised of captain Nick Kirkland, a Chemical Engineer, Benjamin Smith, a Software Engineer, Dean Straub, a Chemical Engineer, Casey Kretzer, a Physics major, and Katherine Kragh, a Chemical Engineer. This is the first team of all freshmen in recollection of affiliated staff.

College Bowl, which describes itself as “The Varsity Sport of the Mind,” is a competition for college students. “We had ten teams sign up,” said Graduate Assistant Stefani Meyer, who coordinates the competition at Rose-Hulman on behalf of Student Affairs. “The competition was open to all Rose students and free to enter. Rose then picks-up the entry fee for the team that wins and moves on to regionals,” she explained. Rose-Hulman is in a region with Indiana and most of Illinois.

Professor of Mathematics John Rickert participated when he was a student at Wisconsin and Michigan. “[Questions] cover a wide range of topics - science, literature, stuff in the news,” said Rickert.

“It’s not quite a level playing field,” jested John Robson, Institute Librarian, is often involved with College Bowl at Rose. Since topics run the gamut, and since Rose has a limited area of specialty, other schools don’t see Rose as a challenge. For instance, other schools allow graduate students to continue on the team. “[Other teams] often have some Ph.D’s… we don’t have any Ph.D’s in English Literature,” commented Robson. Other schools take it much more seriously, he said, but Rose students generally just look at it as fun.

“College Bowl was started at Rose in 1979 at the suggestion of President Hulbert, who also funded the activity from his budget,” explained Humanities and Social Sciences professor Heinz Luegenbiehl. “I volunteered to take on the task.” When College Bowl first began at Rose, the school made its own equipment and used the same set of questions repeatedly due to limited funding, indicated Luegenbiehl. “We actually had more teams participating than we do now,” said Luegenbiehl, who noted that in the past Rose has not been very successful at Regional competitions. Over time, the Humanities and Social Sciences department passed it on. “Over the years more faculty have become involved and the whole program is now run much more professionally through student affairs.”

“I think everyone had a great time this year,” commented Meyer. “We even had a few teams bring members of their floor to the competition as a cheerleading squad. One of the floors decked themselves out in face-paint for a match on Friday.”

Jeopardy contestants are often College Bowl alumni; Rickert has known around 10 personally. “College Bowl is a great opportunity for our students to demonstrate that their education is a broadly based one and that they are aware of things besides what they learn in the classroom,” said Leugenbiehl.

The tournament is double elimination. Teams consist of five players. Only four play at a time, and the fifth on the roster is a sub, who may enter at half time. Each half is seven minutes long. At the end of the fourteen minutes, the team with the most points wins. A toss up question is asked, and a player on either team can buzz in for a chance to answer. If a team answers correctly, they are given 10 points and the chance to answer a bonus question on an unrelated topic worth between 20 - 30 points. Teams only lose points on a wrong answer if they buzz in before the moderator, who presents the questions, is done reading.

Robson, Rickert, Leugenbiehl, and Clint Whitson, a Graduate Assistant in Student Affairs and Higher Education were the four readers this year. Students volunteered to judge answers, keep score, and watch time.