After a down year for the school’s Future Problem Solving’s team, Chloe Seifert (10) has confidence in what this year’s version can accomplish.

“I started in seventh grade because I had heard about the club and I thought it sounded really interesting,” Chloe Seifert [10] said. “I’ve done a team booklet every other year. But last year, [my team] was having a lot of trouble getting to the meetings and no one really showed up, so I knew it wasn’t going to be our best year. I was, however, able to go [to the state competition] as an individual with one of the other teams that needed an extra person.”

Future Problem Solving started in August and holds meetings every Wednesday for one hour. During this time, its 48 members work on a six-step problem that is set in the future. The members work together in groups to research their practice topic and come up with a creative solution. All of their work is then assembled into a booklet that is reviewed by people of the district. These people give feedback on what they need to improve on to do better next time. After assembling several practice booklets, the teams are ready to put their skills to the test. But these skills are not obtained overnight.

Seifert’s second team performed at the state level last year along with sophomore Violet Chace. Future Problem Solving even reaches an international competition level that will be held in Massachusetts this year. Speaking of this year,  Seifert’s confident that things are looking up for her team. 

” I’m looking forward to [the competition] because I am with a new team this year and we all have a lot of experience,” Seifert said. “I think this will be a good year for the team.” 

But Future Problem Solving isn’t just about winning, it’s also about the future, and this club prepares its members for just that.

“This is one of those things on your college resume that looks really good because the colleges will look at it and see that you understand how to take a problem, attack it, come up with solutions, pick the best one and create an action plan,” club sponsor Athena Pietrzak said. “Colleges want people who know to do things like this.”

By Reilly Stein