After intense semifinal and final rounds, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences won the 2008 ASU Academic Bowl on Thursday night.
The liberal-arts college beat out the Herberger College of Arts 495-120 in the final round, making them champions for the second year in a row.
CLAS captain and Japanese senior Carlos Ross said that three of the four team members were on the winning team last year.
“The Academic Bowl has been a lot of fun,” Ross said. “We practiced every week for this, and I am honored to be a part of it.”
In two 12-minute rounds in the semifinals, the Herberger College had defeated the Morrison School of Management and Agribusiness with a score of 350-125. CLAS defeated the Mary Lou Fulton School of Education in the semifinals with a score of 395-160.
The final rounds were held Thursday night in the studios of KAET, Channel 8. The matchups will air on KAET in November.
The Academic Bowl kicked off Oct. 14-15 with 15 teams of undergraduate students representing colleges across all four ASU campuses. The opening round eliminated seven teams, leaving just eight teams to compete in the quarterfinals. The four winning teams from the quarterfinals advanced to Thursday’s semifinals.
The competition is a question-and-answer format with subjects ranging from science, literature, sports, pop culture and music.
Virgil Renzulli, director of the Academic Bowl and ASU’s vice president of Public Affairs, said he believes it’s important to highlight students’ academic achievements.
“We thought that the Academic Bowl is very important because ASU is an institution that has been changing quite a bit,” Renzulli said. “We wanted to focus more attention on the academic achievements of our students and not just the great athletes and intellectuals that we have here.”
Renzulli said that most schools have a hard time putting together one team, so the fact that ASU has 15 teams is amazing.
“The questions are extremely hard, and the teams have been doing very well,” he said. “One of our teams from last year’s Academic Bowl placed nationally.”
Each member of the winning four-person team will receive $4,500 in scholarship money, and the team will display the President’s Trophy in their college. Up to four people on the winning college or school’s alternate team will receive $1,000 in scholarship money as well.
History and global studies senior Erin Hutchinson, a member of the winning CLAS team, said she felt like the whole college was cheering them on.
“I felt like we were getting the school involved, and now we have bragging rights,” she said.
Reach the reporter at allison.carlin@asu.edu.
