The 10th annual Homecoming Intramural Quiz Bowl hosted by the Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi is set to begin Nov. 1 at 2 p.m. in the Student Union Theater. The practice session, according to the Information and Team Registration rubric, is suggested for contestants to attend, and will be held Monday, Oct. 31 at 2 p.m.

Secretary of Southeastern’s chapter of the Phi Kappa Phi honor society and Director of the Quiz Bowl, Dr. Joan Faust, was the original founder of the event, which dates back to 2001.

“We started [the quiz bowl] 10 years ago when I had applied for a Promotion of Excellence grant,” said Faust. “They were offering grants through Phi Kappa Phi, you know like projects that might bring literacy to a community or engage in academic pursuits.”

The program gained the full funding requested which helped provide the equipment for the tournament including buzzers and stock questions for the show.

“You do have to buy questions from the quiz bowl organizations because they’re official questions,” said Faust. “Some of it is very top secret, you even have to tell them what part of the country you are from so that they don’t accidently give too many people in sections of the country the same questions.”

The Quiz Bowl is a question and answer, double-elimination tournament which gives questions at random covering everything from history, literature and geography to the arts and multiculturalism. In order to compete, you have to fall within the top 10 percent of the four colleges available at Southeastern.

“We invite the top students in the top 10 percent, seniors in each academic college,” said Faust. “The top 10 percent of all graduate students will be invited as well.”

These students have received a letter from President John L. Crain in the form of a hard copy and through email, congratulating them on their nomination.

During game day, the teams will be broken into two categories, students and faculty.

“After the double elimination, the top student teams play the top faculty team,” said Faust. “The winner of this round wins the game and is declared the champions of the quiz bowl.”

The contestants are widespread among the four academic colleges in order to attack the contest from every angle.

“We get people who are specialties in each field,” said Faust. “They try to get a biologist, a mathematician, a humanities person so that they can really kind of cover [all divisions].”

Players cannot prepare in advanced for the Quiz Bowl because there is no selected theme or genre of questions, which was developed in order to regulate equity.

“We arbitrarily get these questions for the quiz bowl tournament and to be fair they really are an in eclectic sort and can be on popular culture; it can be physics, it can be math,” said Faust.

The top faculty and top student teams will win a $100 dollars regardless of who wins the final round.

“The overall winner doesn’t get any money, but they get a big trophy they have to pass down every year so I get little individual trophies for them to keep so each member of the top teams gets a trophy,” said Faust.

According to Faust, the General Manager of the Southeastern Channel, Rick Settoon has agreed to air the 2011 Quiz Bowl live in November because this year marks its 10th anniversary. Applications for this year’s Quiz Bowl tournament can be found online at www2.selu.edu/orgs/PhiKappaPhi/quizbowlform2011.pdf.