PITTSFIELD – Maine Central Institute’s Future Problem Solvers Team recently won the Maine state championship for the third year in a row, and has qualified for the International Future Problem Solvers Competition in Connecticut early next month.

The team is coached by Anne Miller, head librarian, and Deborah Rozeboom, head of the English department, and all four competitors are underclassmen. They are Alex Cunningham of Pittsfield, who has competed on the team for three years; Michael Dunsmore of Anchorage, Alaska; Josh Leong of Hampden; and Marc Turner of Pittsfield.

Of the eight teams that competed this winter in the senior division, four qualified for the State Bowl: MCI, Rangeley Lakes, Freeport and Winslow. Twelve teams competed at the state championship held last week at China Middle School.

Under the guidance of a teacher-coach, teams of four students use a six-step model to explore challenges and propose action plans to complex societal problems. Throughout the year, teams prepare for competition by researching the given topics and completing the suggested readings. This year’s study subjects included sports medicine, E-commerce, nanotechnology, and the uses of DNA for identification purposes.

At competition each team must create an action plan for solution of the problem which is compiled in a team booklet, an important part of the judged criteria. Competitors also must prepare a four-minute skit in which the team must convey their action plan using minimal props and scenery. For their skit about DNA identification, the state competition subject, MCI’s team members invited two of Warsaw Middle School’s middle level team, eighth-graders Chelsea Condon and Corey Cote of Pittsfield, to join them onstage.

In addition to their state champion trophy, the MCI team also came home with an additional award presented to Karlyn Moyer, MCI’s Class of 2003 valedictorian, for her first-place future scenario writing about nanotechnology.

MCI’s team will attend the international competition at the University of Connecticut at Storrs the weekend of June 5- 8 where the topic for problem solving will be World Wide Communication.