Subject: The National Brain Bee Date: Mon, 3 Aug 1998 13:49:46 EST From: "NORBERT R. MYSLINSKI" Organization: UNIVERSITY OF MD DENTAL SCHOOL To: nrm001@DENTAL.UMARYLAND.EDU Dear Brain Bee Coordinator: I am looking forward to working with you on the First National Brain Bee. We have had an enthusiastic response from all over the country. More than twice as many people have volunteered to conduct a regional bee than we had anticipated. The list of regional coordinators is below. We have scheduled a National Brain Bee Coordinators meeting to be held in Los Angeles during the Society for Neuroscience Meeting. It will be from 2:30 to 4:30 on Sunday, November 8 in the Santa Barbara Room B of the Westin Bonaventure Hotel and Suites (one of the co-headquarters hotels). It will be held right before and right next to the BAW Planning Session/Chapter Representatives' Meeting and Reception. If you cannot attend please send a representative. To reiterate what we are doing, the National Brain Bee is similar to the National Spelling Bee. It is a live question and answer competition for high school students from around the country. All the questions are about the brain. Regional Brain Bees will be conducted during January and February, 1999. The winners from those will come to Maryland to compete in the National competition on Tuesday, March 16. The winners of the Nationals will then meet the President the next day (maybe). We hope that this activity will increase national press coverage, and motivate young men and women all over the country to read about the brain. Based on past experience we decided to have all the questions come from the book "Brain Facts" published by the Society for Neuroscience. This book is challenging but not overwhelming for a good high school student. The books are $5 from the Society. The more students competing the better, but a minimum of 12 students from at least 4 different schools should be adequate. If all 26 Regional Bees send their winners to the National we should have 26 contestants in the Nationals. Since we already created questions from "Brain Facts" for our local Brain Bee during this last BAW, we will perfect and add to those questions and send confidential copies to all the Regional Brain Bee Coordinators. We will keep some in order to have unique questions for the Nationals. We are presently searching for a corporate sponsor. Any suggestions you may have would be appreciated. And any support you can recruit for your own regional brain bee would be very helpful. Please share this E-mail with others on your planning committee, and keep a copy of it for yourself for future reference. We will be sending you monthly E-mail updates. Please feel free to contact us if you have any suggestions for making this a quality and fun affair. Send me any corrections or changes you may have to the list below. Norbert THE FIRST NATIONAL BRAIN BEE REGIONAL CONTACTS State City Organization Name (U.S.A) California La Jolla The Scripps Research Institute Steven Henriksen Colorado Denver U of Colorado Health Sciences Center Jennifer Wilshire Conn. Fairfield Sacred Heart University John Griffin D.C. Washington Georgetown University Benjamin Walker Florida Miami U of Miami Medical School Robert Yezierski Illinois Chicago Northwestern University Robert Harper-Mangels Iowa Des Moines U of Osteopathic Medicine Edward Finnerty Kansas Manhattan Kansas State University Katherine Grace Hill Louisiana New Orleans Louisiana State U Medical School Nicolas Bazan Maryland Baltimore University of Maryland Norbert Myslinski Mass. Waltham Kennedy Shriver Center for Mental Retardation Stephen Oross Minnesota Minneapolis Hennepin County Medical Center Janet Vargo University of Minnesota Maro Haile New Mexico Albuquerque U of New Mexico Medical School Don Partridge New York Rochester University of Rochester David Holtzman New York Buffalo SUNY at Buffalo Chris Cohan Ohio Berea Baldwin Wallace College Dawn Remmers Oregon Eugene U of Oregon Inst for Neuroscience Marvin Gordon-Lickey Penn. Philadelphia The David Mahoney Institute Fiona Cowan Lancaster Franklin and Marshall Robert Jinks Tennessee Nashville Vanderbilt University Marcie Pospichal Texas Houston Museum of Health and Medical Sciences Zizi Asfour Lubbock Texas Tech University Louis Chiodo Utah Salt Lake City University of Utah Tracy Butterfield Virginia Norfolk Eastern Virginia Medical School Paul Aravich (CANADA) Ontario Toronto University of Toronto Jonathan Dostrovsky DR.NORBERT R. MYSLINSKI Associate Professor of Neuroscience Department of Biological Sciences University of Maryland Dental School 666 West Baltimore Street Baltimore, Maryland 21201-1586 TEL: 410-706-7258 FAX: 410-706-0193 E-mail: nrm001@dental.umaryland.edu