Home state: Kansas

Grade level: Eighth

Jack Staddon was a 6-foot-6-inch (1.98-meter) eighth grader when he won the first Bee. Reporters were mystified when he told them he was the shortest and dumbest person in his class. That was until he explained that he was the only person in his class at a six-person Seventh-day Adventist school.

Jack says he developed an interest in geography as a child while listening to his mother talk about India, where her parents and grandparents were missionaries. He says that winning the Bee gave him more confidence to express knowledge and ideas. “At church, retired educators and ministers would talk to me as if I, a 15-year-old upstart, were their equal. That really meant a lot to me,” he says. Today, Jack is a senior premed zoology major at Andrews University in Michigan. He says the large number of international students makes the university a “geography-phile’s paradise.” From there, he plans to enter medical school.

Jack offers advice to Bee contestants on how not to prepare. The Bee “is about a general understanding of world geography, so memorizing the names of all the county seats in Kansas won’t help you much!”

Winning Question:

Name the flat intermontane area located at an elevation of about 10,000 feet (3,050 meters) in the central Andes.

Answer: Altiplano

        Photograph by Sisse Brimberg