An animated video with a hip-hop soundtrack called “Crank Dat Calculus” has been selected as grand prize winner of the FILMS (Fun Is Learning Math and Science) Video Competition sponsored by the National Math and Science Initiative (NMSI), a nationwide effort to raise American math and science achievement. The winning video was produced by Travis Grenier, a junior at Franklin County High School in Rocky Mount, Va.
As the top winner, Grenier will receive a $3,000 college scholarship. His award will be presented tomorrow by U.S. Rep. Tom Perriello, D-Va., at a NMSI convocation at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C. Grenier will also receive an all-expenses-paid trip to DreamWorks Animation in Los Angeles. Grenier currently is enrolled in AP Calculus, AP English, and AP History classes.
Two other finalists tied for second place: “Trapezoidal Sum,” produced by Matt Albritton and Seth Biazo at Springdale Har-Ber High School in Springdale, Ark., and “Math and Science are F=µN!,” produced by Robert Schmidt and Nicholas O’Connor of Northampton High School in Northampton, Mass. The second place winners will receive scholarships of $2,000.
“The idea of the competition was to provide a forum for students to demonstrate that math and science are where the action is, and we were very pleased with the creativity they showed in their videos,” said Tom Luce, CEO of NMSI. “They came up with clever parodies of hip-hop songs, a science mystery who-dun-it, and even animated calculators. It’s more proof that these young people have worlds of talent to bring to math and science.”
The video competition invited students in AP math, science, and English classes supported by NMSI grants to make short videos showing why math and science are fun. The national winners were selected from finalists from six states that are implementing the vanguard AP Training and Incentive Program. The first, second, and third place winners from those states received cash scholarships from NMSI as well as graphing calculators from Texas Instruments.
The judges for the national competition included Dr. Michael Brown, former Nobel Prize winner for medicine and the Paul J. Thomas Professor of Molecular Genetics and Director of the Jonsson Center for Molecular Genetics at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas; Tom Luce, CEO of NMSI and former Assistant Secretary of Education; Ed Leonard, Chief Technology Officer of DreamWorks Animation; Melendy Lovett, President of Education Technology for Texas Instruments; and Cynthia Langlands, Community Investment Communications Manager for ExxonMobil.
Sponsors for the competition include Exxon Mobil Corp., DreamWorks Animation and Texas Instruments. The winning videos can be found on the NMSI website or by linking to: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=00C4CAD7AD34A50E
“The goal of this competition is to foster increased enrollment in AP math and science classes,” said Luce. “We want high school students to see the ‘cool’ side of math and science education, as portrayed by their peers. Eighty percent of the jobs of the future will require an educational background in math or science, so it is imperative that we increase students’ interest in these subjects to give them a competitive edge in their future careers.”
The National Math and Science Initiative (NMSI) was launched in 2007 by top leaders in business, education, and science to reverse the United States’ troubling decline in math and science education.
A non-profit organization, NMSI’s mission is expanding programs with proven success in math and science education across the nation. The initial focus is on replicating two programs that each have 10 years of data proving they work: the AP Training and Incentive Program and UTeach, a program to recruit and prepare college students to become qualified math, science and computer science teachers.
Major support for the national initiative has come from the Exxon Mobil Corp., the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, with in-kind assistance provided by IBM and Perot Systems.
For more information, visit www.nationalmathandscience.org.
Contacts:
NMSI
Rena Pederson, 214-665-2523
Communications Director
or
Cooksey
Communications
Karen Berlin, 972-580-0662
