Shawnee Mission East Students Win Academic WorldQuest Competition

SM East Academic WorldQuest Champs
Shawnee Mission School District

A team of four Shawnee Mission East students were named champions in a recent citywide Academic WorldQuest competition.

Kara Auvray, Grant Colvin, Audrey Helmuth, and Janice Jiang are now preparing to compete in national competition in April, which will be held in Washington, D.C. The team has also been invited to compete in another WorldQuest competition for adult competitors in April at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

Academic WorldQuest, sponsored by World Affairs Councils of America, is a team competition for high school students. Students compete with knowledge of current international politics, geography, global economics, history, and world culture.

To prepare for the competition, students studied suggested readings from United Nations bulletins and State Department briefings related to topics including Qatar, North Korea, the World Trade Organization, NATO and current events. 

Academic WorldQuest is an extra-curricular activity, so team members divided the topics and worked independently. The team met once a week after school to prepare by taking online current event quizzes. Brenda Fishman, U.S. History and International Baccalaureate (IB) teacher, is the team sponsor. The members of this team are all enrolled in IB.

The top prize for the national winner is a trip to Qatar in June provided by the government of Qatar.