On Saturday, Oct. 1st, Nazareth’s EPICS club held its second Young Inventors contest, and children from different schools in 6th and 7th grades came to participate.

EPICS stands for Engineering Projects in Community Service, and it is the club’s goal to help the community with interesting and innovative projects.  The contest was created originally to motivate kids to participate in service in a different way from what they are used to.

Dr. Roberta Zasadzinski, physics teacher and one of the moderators of EPICS stated, “it was started because I knew students liked contests, so I was trying to combine the whole EPICS idea with a contest format.  The EPICS people at Purdue University came last year to see if they could use the format for other schools.”

This means the service opportunity could be offered to students across the state. The goal of the contest itself is to give young students a taste of what EPICS does all year long. EPICS strives to make everyday life better in small ways, using research, trial and error, and lots of hard work to do so. These young students got a glimpse of what EPICS is all about.

  “The contest features a person with a need, and the contest participants need to try to invent and build something to help that person. For example, this year’s contest was centered around a girl who biked 15 to 20 miles a day for her summer job.  The EPIC Inventor participants needed to come up with a design and invention made by using recycled and repurposed materials, along with materials bought with a $10 budget,” said Dr. Zasadzinski.  

At the event, students made paper chains with a single sheet of paper and a self standing tower with a deck of cards. Both activities were great fun for the young inventors, but still a great challenge, that required much trial and error. All in all, the event was a huge success. Kingswood Academy won the Presentation Award; St. Mary’s won the Documentation Award; and St. Louise won the Design Award.