Custom Class: header-search-container

Custom Class: header-search-close

Or Explore Suggested Pages

Custom Class: header-search-button

Custom Class: header-menu-button

Fairs and Competitions

Every outstanding project begins with a question. Students don't know the answers — at first — but our curious learners are eager to research, explore, and discover.Students work with the BCIL as early as kindergarten. By Middle and Upper School, many are ready to showcase their ideas on campus and in external competitions. Our students tackle topics of interest in depth through classes, independent studies, and individual projects, knowing that faculty and staff will support, guide, and encourage. They may become Innovation Challenge finalists and science fair winners, but more importantly, they become confident and determined investigators.


Innovation Challenge

The United Nations' 17 Sustainable Development Goals provide the foundation for the BCIL's Innovation Challenge. Students approach this sustainability challenge with enthusiasm and creativity, pitching their projects to judges who are entrepreneurs and professionals. Recent Challenge winners and finalists included an app that rewards carpooling in tight-knit communities, a device for boats that eradicates harmful algae, a robot that turns mental commands into physical action, a financial literacy program for youth, and a fabric combining sustainable materials with nanotechnology.

A cardboard trash can and felt homemade lunchbox prototype


Challenge of the Month

Our Lower School students have challenges of the month, which are based on relatable issues that their own communities face. They have devised improvements for the school’s rainy day plans and lunch systems (above), learned about data visualization, and invented screen-free games and cardboard arcade amusements.

Students surround two boys in blue sweatshirts watching them battle two robots

BCIL Symposium

More than 100 projects, from kindergarten through 12th grade, are displayed in this annual showcase, with students on hand to explain their efforts. A 5th grader might describe her accessible playground design while a 12th grader breaks down battery science. 

Beyond Brentwood

Our students showcase their creativity and ingenuity in various competitive arenas.

A few of the standouts in the World Series of Innovation:

  • Ryan Levine ’21, Top 10 finish in the Sustainable Careers Challenge (2019)
  • Jonah N. ’25, 1st Place in the Accelerating Environmental Sustainability Challenge (2022)
  • Leyla Parsi ’24 and Riya Aswani ’23, 1st Place in the Clean Energy Challenge (2020)
  • Jacqueline C. ’26, Olivia M. ’26, and Ashley S. '26, 2nd Place in the Gender Equality Challenge (2021)

Brentwood distinctions in the LA County Science and Engineering Fair:

  • Sophia S. '29, 1st Place, Junior Division, Applied Chemistry for her project, Energy Drinks and Sugar: The Effect of the Amount of Sugar in Popular Sports Drinks; also invited to the Thermo Fisher Scientific Junior Innovators Challenge
  • Lily A. '25, 2nd Place, Senior Division, Ecology, for Ant’s Capability to Sequester Carbon Dioxide to Increase CO2 Removal in the Environment.

Sophia and Lily represented Los Angeles at the California State Science Fair.

Multiple Brentwood Robotics teams consistently place at the top of regional competitions.

Signature Events

IMPACT CHALLENGE

The BCIL's Impact Challenge invites students around the globe to contemplate real-world problems, cultivating skills and know-how that can motivate them to become the problem-solvers of tomorrow.

Rock the Street Wall Street

A collaboration with the Office of Equity and Inclusion, Rock the Street Wall Street — offered to female and non-binary Upper School students — aims to bring gender equity to financial markets, encouraging girls and non-binary students to enter careers in finance.

International Trips

The BCIL offers a three-week summer elective that culminates in travel. One recent global health class — co-taught by USC Professor Dr. Ben LaBrot, Founder of Floating Doctors — traveled to Panama, where students learned about remote healthcare from a Floating Doctors team and interacted with the indigenous Ngäbe populations.