Upper School team places 10th of 660 nationwide

The Landon team of Bo Deng ’15 (not pictured), Mike Wang ’15, Steven Liu ’15, Will Clark ’15 and Matt Seebald ’17 finished 10th out of 660 schools nationwide in the grades 11–12 division of the 2015 Test of Engineering Aptitude, Mathematics and Science (TEAMS) Competition. The boys were the No. 1 team in the state of Maryland and placed fifth in the nation out of the 75 selective elite private schools that participated.

To succeed in TEAMS — an annual STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) competition that challenges students to work collaboratively to solve real everyday engineering problems — the Bears had to fully embrace the Landon principles of teamwork and perseverance.

“Since October, these boys have been spending their own free time educating themselves on this year’s topic, alternative fuel sources,” said Upper School science teacher Robert Moore, who coached the students. “Bo Deng put together the team, they would read everything they could on their own, and then we would all get together once a week to do team-building exercises and practice on old tests.”

In March, the Bears squad and a team from Stone Ridge gathered at Landon (designated a regional testing site) to take the three-hour test, which consisted of a series of multiple choice questions followed by five essay questions that the students worked together to answer.

“Those essay questions are very involved,” Moore said. “The boys had to know about electricity, geography, how to come up with areas and volumes, chemistry, physics, mathematics, how to convert from metric to English units. What they did is very impressive, and I’m proud of them.”