A new, unique student club recently found a home at Morrison-Talbott Library in Waterloo, offering a handful of students an opportunity to flex a range of creative muscles as they engage in a variety of STEAM-related activities.

Odyssey of the Mind, or OM, is an international competition that began in the 1970s.

Today, the program sees groups of students from around the United States and other countries tackle a variety of challenges – referred to by OM specifically as “problems” – which put their abilities to the test in the fields of STEAM – science, technology, engineering, arts and math.

There are five of these problems – not including the additional “Primary” problem geared toward younger students.

Of the problems student teams can choose to tackle, three involve some sort of engineering. One involves building some sort of vehicle and another centers around creating a small balsa wood structure to support a large amount of weight. The third has students create a miscellaneous contraption.

The other two of the five problems focus chiefly on a performance. The “Classics” problem involves students performing their own adaptation of a classic story such as a Greek myth. The “Performance” problem has students present some original short play.

Each of these problems – including the engineering challenges – has a performance element to them, as students participating in OM competitions present a skit to several judges with their own script, props and building project, if the problem calls for it.

Chrissy Bartnick serves as the president/director of Southern Illinois Odyssey of the Mind Booster Club. She and her husband were closely involved with the organization when they originally lived in Florida, starting out serving as coaches.

Bartnick offered her own overview of OM and what it involves for students.

“They get given this problem – one of those five problems – and they have to deconstruct it, and they have rules,” Bartnick said. “They have time constraints, they have budget constraints and they have things that they have to add in to the performance on top of those technical elements to the problem.”

Bartnick – who coaches the Waterloo club for students from sixth through eighth grade – offered some examples of problems.

She noted that the problems each have their own unique theme from year to year. The Waterloo club selected the “Structure” problem this year which features a “Deep Space Structure” theme.

To satisfy the requirements, these students made a 15-gram structure made of balsa wood meant to support an ever-growing amount of weight, but as their structure is being tested, they present it to the judges through a skit as though they’re a group of scientists discovering this structure in deep space.

Bartnick also offered a description of the Classics problem.

“They’ll say, ‘You’re gonna rewrite a Shakespearean-themed work of art, but you’re gonna do it in modern-day times, and you have to have a character like this or you have to have a setting like this,’” Bartnick said. “But then they use they’re own creativity.”

She emphasized the creativity that students put into these projects which they work together on over the course of several months.

“It really fosters the divergent thinking,” Bartnick said. “It fosters public speaking. They’re very, very uplifting towards the kids and their performances. Positivity, self-confidence is huge on Odyssey on top of all of the other lifelong lessons they learn.”

Bartnick further emphasized the degree of growth that participation in OM has facilitated for students in her experience.

Not only do the kids and teenagers push the limits of their engineering and creativity, but they also build on their leadership and teamwork skills as well as their public speaking abilities.

“We have loved it,” Bartnick said. “We’ve seen so much growth in all of the kids, not just our own kids. Shy kids coming in, barely talking to the group, very very shy, and by the end of the six, seven months that we do the program, the kids have no fear of getting in front of 30 people, 60 people, 100 people and performing this thing that they’ve created themselves.”

As previously mentioned, students from Waterloo Junior High involved in the club chose the Structure problem for this year, and they participated in the Illinois State Tournament this past Saturday.

As Bartnick and her husband have pushed to bring the positive impact of OM that they experienced in Florida to Waterloo, it would seem they’ve been more than successful as the club took home the first place trophy over the weekend.

“They did extremely well on both sides of the performance this time,” Bartnick said. “They did good on the performance and also the structure.”

The students are now set to participate in the Odyssey of the Mind World Finals at Iowa State University from May 21-24, where they’ll be competing against teams from other states and countries.

In the meantime, Bartnick said they’ll be focusing on improving their presentation, taking into account criticisms they received from the Illinois tournament’s judges and trying to make their structure even stronger – though Bartnick said the structure as it is now is so strong that it held over 300 pounds, and the tournament ran out of weights to add.

Looking even further down the line, Bartnick hopes for the club to grow beyond the group of six that it currently consists of.

While the group currently operates out of the library, she expressed her hopes that the school would accept OM as an extracurricular with a sponsor as is typical.

The program in Waterloo could also expand to even more clubs, with students from all different grade levels coming together to choose which problem they want to tackle each year.

The program, which is a nonprofit, is also looking for more sponsors. They have already received support from the Waterloo Optimist Club and the Monroe County Arts Alliance, but would require more help to grow in the community, even stretching outside of Waterloo.

The club is also holding a fundraiser at Morrison-Talbott Library April 14 from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., with folks invited to donate bags of soft household goods such as bedding, blankets and towels and clothing including coats, accessories and belts.

Bartnick expressed her hopes to see the program expand in the community, providing even more students with a unique extracurricular that helps them work on a variety of skills for their future.

For more information on Odyssey of the Mind, contact Bartnick at southilootm@gmail.com.