St. Teresa earned first place at the regional WYSE competition held at Richland Community College on February 7. WYSE is short for Worldwide Youth in Science and Engineering and is sponsored by the University of Illinois, School of Engineering. St. Teresa competes in the division for schools with enrollments below 300 students. Other schools in the same division are Meridian, Central A&M, Warrensburg-Latham, Sangamon Valley, and Argenta-Oreana.

St. Teresa has won the 300 and under division the previous six years. When asked about the school’s success, coach Paul Furman said “The schools that do well at this competition have many students that have high scores, not just one or two students. I think you can see that St. Teresa students are getting an excellent
education by the fact that eight of our students had one of the three highest scores.”

​​​​​​​St. Teresa now advances to compete at the Eastern Illinois University Sectional on March 8 where they hope to improve on last year’s 2nd place finish.​​​​​​​

Individuals that earned one of the top three scores are:

• Tegan Lakshmanan – 1st in English (tie) and 1st in Mathematics
• Shirley Syed – 1st in Biology and 1st in Chemistry
• Alex Hein – 1st in English (tie) and 2nd in Computer Science
• Charlie Blackburn – 2nd in Physics and 2nd in Mathematics
• Lauryn Pugh – 2nd in Chemistry (tie) and 3rd in Physics (tie)
• Taylor Prasun – 2nd in Chemistry (tie)
• Mitchell Vandercar – 3rd in Chemistry
• Tyler Phillips – 3rd in Physics (tie)