<p>I've been hearing about these clubs in this forum and now I'm really interested in them.
Is there anything important I should know about starting them?
Who should I ask to advise? As far as I know, no one in my school except me has even heard of either or the two...so I'm unsure if I'll be able to garner enough interest for either.</p>
<p>For the Model UN club, I was thinking perhaps the AP Gov teacher or my AP US History teacher.<br>
For the Science Olympiad team, I was considering my AP Chemistry teacher. </p>
<p>Is there anything important I should know about the two? I'm a junior this year, so I'm not going to be able to participate in either for very long...</p>
<p>We just recently started a Debate Club at my school. It was a 2 year process to make it official in the eyes of our administration. It also helped our cause that we won awards along the way. We called it a Debate Club, but we normally attend Model UN, mock Congress, our state Youth Legislative Assembly, and we want to participate in Mock Trial. Debate Club so it was all encompassing and could all different types of activities. </p>
<p>Two keys to starting a club are having an advisor who is willing to travel and the support of your administration. Competitions are usually weekend long events and you will need someone willing to be the collect money, permission slips, car/bus driving, stay all weekend person. Find some events within a 2 hours or less driving time, register with a small group of interested students, and proceed. We started 2 years ago with 3 students and we are up to 15 regular participants plus we are partnering with a neighboring high school to help them start their own Debate Club. Keep in mind that number isn’t bad since my school only has 410 students. </p>
<p>We are also hosting our own county wide Model UN conference this April for any and all interested middle school students. This will help train the rising high school students, plus the more you do to bring credibility to your program, the better.</p>
<p>Let me know if you have more questions!</p>
<p>Hey!
I don’t know what Model UN is but the Science Olympiad at my school was started by a junior when I was a freshman. At that time, no one at my school had ever heard of SciOly before and the only reason I joined was because the freshmen Biology teacher was the advisor and he said he would give us extra credit if we joined. After a while though I was able to enjoy studying together with my friends.
Right now it may be too late for you to compete this year since the competition has already ended for state, but to start a club you have to go to the Science Olympiad website and register. There are two types of main events you compete in: building events and knowledge events.
Building events are things where you have to build the lightest bridge that is able to hold up the most sand or the helicopter that is able to stay up in the air the longest. Knowledge events are things that test how much you know about a particular subject. When you register for Science Olympiad, they send you a packet of rules that tells you exactly what you need to know and learn.
There are also three levels of the competition: regional, state, and national. In my state however, we do not have a regional competition since my state is pretty small so we just go to state. Our first year at state, we totally won first in everything!!! We were surprised. Our club contained mostly freshmen who didn’t know anything about Science Olympiad and we pretty much winged everything on the test yet we still won and made it to nationals. At first we thought it was just the standards of our state and luck but then when we got to nationals, someone from our school actually placed in the top three for his event! This made all of us pretty happy. 
Oh yeah forgot to mention it but the events are all partner events so its two people per event. At my school we can send two teams to the competition. We call the team that aims for the gold medals the A team and the team that aims for the silver medals the B team.
Thing is when our club first started, we did not have any funds and had to do everything ourselves. We went to the public library to copy pages from the books to study or we printed out information from the internet. When we went to nationals, we were embarrassed because all the schools there had fancy displays and costumes when it came time to show off their schools, yet we had nothing at all. This all changed in less then a year. After winning our first state, we got a lot of sponsors. The school gave us a whole workroom, parents helped us fundraise, teachers voluntarily came over to help us, the principle even let us leave some classes early just to prepare for Science Olympiad. I live in the West Coast and because of all the money we got from winning state the first year and having one student place at nationals the first year, we were able to go to Wisconsin for nationals my sophomore year for only $150. Orlando, Florida my junior year was only $320 (this was because we wanted to go to Harry Potter World :D). For both these events, our room, board, plane, and food was fully paid for and we stayed their for over a week. These are REALLY good prices in my opinion.
I don’t think it matters if you are not going to participate in it long. The person who started my club was able to leave behind a legacy. Ever since she started it, my school has been winning. This gave my school something to be proud of. You can start this club and become the first Science Olympiad president at your school and then leave behind your own legacy.</p>