Do you have a background in ocean or freshwater sciences? Are you excited about inspiring the next generation of ocean leaders while spreading a little joy, hope, and community along the way?
If that sounds like you, the National Ocean Sciences Bowl® (NOSB) would love your help writing questions for our 2026 competitions!

What is the NOSB?

The NOSB is a nationally recognized, highly acclaimed high school academic competition where students test their knowledge of ocean and freshwater sciences across a range of disciplines. But the NOSB is more than just a competition. It gives students the chance to see themselves as future scientists, educators, technologists, and policy experts. It also helps them build leadership, teamwork, and communication skills, tools they’ll carry through high school, college, their careers, and into their communities as environmental stewards. For the past 28 years, the NOSB has sparked curiosity, challenged young minds, and introduced countless students to exciting futures in STEM. To keep making that impact, we need your help.

How You Can Help

Question writers play a very important role in the NOSB because they provide the multiple choice, short answer, and critical thinking team challenge questions (TCQs) used in the competitions. Usually, the NOSB recruits a team of paid Question Writers each summer, who earn an honorarium for their contributions. But this year, due to funding challenges, we’re doing things differently: we’re reaching out to our amazing ocean science community to crowdsource new questions on a volunteer basis. By submitting questions, you’ll be directly supporting the students who participate in 2026 and helping us keep the competition strong.

Who We’re Looking For

We need volunteers with a wide range of expertise in ocean and freshwater sciences, including biology, chemistry, physics, geology, geography, technology, social science, and marine policy. Because our high school participants are tested at the undergraduate level, contributors should have at least a bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience in a science field, and ideally experience teaching high school or undergraduate students.

To ensure fairness, volunteer question writers cannot be current NOSB coaches, students, or directly connected to participants in 2025–2026. We also ask all contributors to follow our guidelines for question writing and to sign a confidentiality agreement.

Curious what NOSB questions look like? Check out our Sample Questions webpage for examples.

How to Submit Questions

We’ve made the process as simple as possible through our NOSB Question Submission Google Form. The deadline for submissions is November 9, 2025. Questions submitted after that date may still be considered, but earlier is better since they’re more likely to be used in competition.

The form walks you through short training materials, then gives you the option to submit:

Toss-up questions:

  • Are ALWAYS multiple-choice
  • Questions are read orally
  • First person to buzz in gets to answer
  • Once recognized, student has 5 seconds to answer
  • No conferring allowed
  • Questions progressively get harder through rounds
  • More guidance is provided in the submission form

Bonus questions:

  • Received when a student gets the toss-up question correct
  • Read orally
  • Are ALWAYS short answer
  • Therefore…they are a bit harder than the toss-ups
  • Student has 20 seconds to answer, can confer and take notes
  • More guidance is provided in the submission form

A TCQ is a worksheet-style, critical thinking question to be answered cooperatively by a group of four students. The questions may include solving equations, interpreting graphs and applying scientific concepts. They should be challenging and focused on critical thinking and NOT just a recitation of facts. TCQs are worth 20 points. The points should be distributed so that students can earn partial credit (in whole numbers) and the answers should provide clear guidelines on points for the graders. A template and more guidance is provided in the submission form. Final TCQs should be submitted via email to the NOSB.

You’ll only need to sign the confidentiality and quality agreement once, but you’re welcome to submit as many questions as you’d like, and we hope you do!

Thank You

The NOSB is uniquely special because of the generosity and knowledge of its community. By submitting even a single question, you’re making it possible for us to continue offering students a challenging, inspiring, and unforgettable experience.

If you’d like to support in other ways, you can also volunteer at a regional or virtual competition, review questions on our Technical Advisory Panel (email us to express interest), or donate/explore sponsorship opportunities to help sustain the program.

Questions or ideas? Reach out anytime at nosb@ucar.edu, we’d love to hear from you.