The Partnership for Academic Competition Excellence (PACE) is a nonprofit organization which runs the National Scholastics Championship (NSC), an end-of-year championship for North American high school quizbowl teams. The NSC has been run in June of each year since 1998.
In addition to running the tournament, PACE awards the Benjamin Cooper Academic Ambassador Award each year at the opening ceremony of the NSC. The award is chosen by PACE members to honor "a high school academic competition team member, advisor, or organization whose character best promotes the spirit and honor of quiz bowl competition." It is named for Ben Cooper, who, as the captain of the It's Academic quizbowl team at Georgetown Day School, worked with the PACE founders to provide a player's perspective on the plans for the inaugural NSC. Ben Cooper died in an automobile accident just before the start of his senior year. In 2004, PACE expanded its recognition program to include a "Young Ambassador" Award to recognize individuals from high school or college quizbowl programs (or alumni) for "valuable and significant contributions to the high school academic competition community". These awards are essentially the only national awards given in recognition of contributions to high school quizbowl.
Beyond running the NSC, PACE offers advice and staff assistance to high schools and colleges who run high school quizbowl tournaments. PACE does not supply questions for regular season tournaments or offer a collegiate competition program.
Read more about Partnership For Academic Competition Excellence: Summary History of The NSC
Famous quotes containing the words partnership, academic, competition and/or excellence:
“Are we bereft of citizenship because we are mothers, wives and daughters of a mighty people? Have women no country—no interests staked in public weal—no liabilities in common peril—no partnership in a nation’s guilt and shame?”
—Angelina Grimké (1805–1879)
“Short of a wholesale reform of college athletics—a complete breakdown of the whole system that is now focused on money and power—the women’s programs are just as doomed as the men’s are to move further and further away from the academic mission of their colleges.... We have to decide if that’s the kind of success for women’s sports that we want.”
—Christine H. B. Grant, U.S. university athletic director. As quoted in the Chronicle of Higher Education, p. A42 (May 12, 1993)
“Knowledge in the form of an informational commodity indispensable to productive power is already, and will continue to be, a major—perhaps the major—stake in the worldwide competition for power. It is conceivable that the nation-states will one day fight for control of information, just as they battled in the past for control over territory, and afterwards for control over access to and exploitation of raw materials and cheap labor.”
—Jean François Lyotard (b. 1924)
“The whole appearance is a toy. For this,
The dove in the belly builds his nest and coos,
Selah, tempestuous bird. How is it that
The rivers shine and hold their mirrors up,
Like excellence collecting excellence?”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)