After competing at the state tournament, the Destination Imagination team has advanced to global finals.

WTV’s Marisa Uddin has the story.

Destination Imagination is a program where students showcase their science, technology, engineering, and math, or STEM skills and their arts and social entrepreneurship skills through creative and collaborative problem solving challenges.

D1 competitions begin with a regional tournament where team solutions are assessed by a panel of trained judges, ranging from educators to artists to engineers.

Originality, workmanship, presentation, and teamwork are elements that each team’s solutions are scored on.

150,000 students participated in tournaments throughout the U.S. and 30 countries in hopes of advancing to global finals.

The D1 team here on campus advanced to global finals by collaborating with some students from Fowler Middle School for the structural challenge.

“Basically what you have to do is build a structure that’s under 175 grams that can hold as much weight as possible and then make a skit on top of that,” sophomore Deepti Aravapalli said. “This will be our third trip to global finals, and in the past we’ve done pretty well at globals but we haven’t gotten in the top ten, so our goal this year is to really get into the top ten. I think we have a better chance than we have in the past.”

Aravapalli says that working with middle school students is beneficial because their youth brings a creative energy.

Destination imagination will compete at global finals from May 25-28 in Knoxville, Tennessee at the University of Tennessee.

Reporting for Wingspan TV I’m Marisa Uddin.