Each year, the upper school Lead and Read program brings Student Council and Honor Council officers to the lower school campus to read stories to the grade 1 classes. The event takes place about eight times a year, most recently on Oct. 16.
The program was started by Gautam Krishnamurthi ’11 when he was a senior. His mother, Deepa Iyengar, continues to come a few times a year to read to the first graders in Cindy Proctor’s homeroom.
“Deepa came last week with the family dog, Scannon (bought at the Harker Fashion Show). The students loved having them both visit!” shared Proctor.
This article was originally published in the fall 2014 Harker Quarterly.
Over the summer, many alumni returned to Harker to attend the memorial service for Sylvia Harp, one of the school’s cherished former faculty members. Harp died of liver cancer on March 29. She began teaching grade 8 English at Harker in 1986 and went on to become head of the school’s English department before her retirement in 2003. Pictured here (L- R), at her moving memorial, are: Mark Gelineau ’90, Alka Tandan ’90, Casey Near ’06, Rohini Venkatraman ’06, Meghana Dhar ’06 and Ira Patnaik ’06.
This article was originally published in the fall 2014 Harker Quarterly.
These days, it seems, there is an app for just about everything, and young app developers have become one of the fastest-growing groups of technological inventors. Often working from home with little or no overhead, using free or low-cost app development tools, creative app makers are attracting the attention of technology companies and users worldwide.
With cell phones practically an extension of our bodies, useful mobile apps have the power to directly affect and improve the quality of everyday life. Indeed, app invention is fast becoming part and parcel of the digital revolution and widely being incorporated into computer science education curricula as the demand for fun, easy to use, new apps grows.
This is music to the ears of several Harker alumni, who have launched, or are about to launch, innovative new apps. Meet app designers Neeraj Baid ’13, Govi Dasu ’12, Daanish Jamal ’12 and his business partner, Adhir Ravipati ’05.
Giftbook: A Mobile Wallet that Stores Gift Cards
Before designing his latest app, called giftbook, developer Neeraj Baid ’13 had a vision: that no one should have to carry or lose plastic gift cards again. That desire led to the creation of giftbook (https://gftbk.herokuapp.com/), Baid’s fourth app for iOS (a mobile operating system developed by Apple for use with their iDevices), which stores gift cards in a centralized location.
“Giftbook is an app that makes spending and keeping track of your gift cards easy,” Baid said. “You can save cards from any retailer on your iPhone so you never worry about forgetting one at home,” he added.
The app, which is now available at Apple’s app store as a mobile gift card wallet, already has received overwhelmingly positive customer reviews. However, Baid is planning a design overhaul and a major update in mid- October that will enable users to purchase and send gifts through giftbook.
“I build features as they come up. For a major update like the one coming up, I’m often working the equivalent of a full-time job to ensure it’s ready by October. There’s also a fair amount of non-technical work involved, such as working with partners to allow me to sell gift cards in giftbook,” Baid explained.
In addition to his work as founder of giftbook, Baid also attends the University of California, Berkeley, where he is getting a degree in electrical engineering and computer science. Additionally, he worked as an iOS intern at Venmo, a company that provides a free, friend-to-friend, mobile payment platform app.
Among giftbook’s features is one that lets users know when they are near a retailer with a relevant gift card (with directions to closest locations); the card simply appears on the phone’s lock screen with easy accessibility. The app also uses a standardized approach to displaying barcodes, so gift cards are accepted by all retailers. To ensure security, sensitive gift card data (such as serial numbers and pins) are never stored on a server.
The apps Baid created prior to giftbook are Take Me Away, SpeakToSnap and a URL shortener for Google. Take Me Away allows users to travel the world from their iPhones by tapping a location button for any global destination, where they can view photos taken by real people, among other features. SpeakToSnap is a voice-activated camera, while the URL shortener allows users to quickly and simply shorten long and unwieldy URLs, using Google’s goo.gl shortening service.
Baid’s first app, SpeakToSnap, came about after taking the Global Online Academy iOS class offered at Harker during the spring of his senior year. “Harker really helped lay a critical computer science foundation,” he recalled.
“Every app I have built comes out of necessity for something I want in my own life,” he said. “For example, I built giftbook after graduating from high school. I needed a way to manage the huge number of gifts I received from graduation parties and already had from before. I’ve found that working on something you personally want is the best way to remain dedicated and complete it at the highest quality possible.”
The best way to learn iOS development, he advised, is simply by doing it. “Your first app won’t be your best – and it shouldn’t be. You’ll learn a lot from building something silly like a URL shortener, and that knowledge will be invaluable as you build your next apps. There are incredible iOS resource tutorials available online and pre-made app components,” he noted.
Learning Dollars: A Pilot Project Designed to Help English Learners in Developing Countries Land Jobs
Govi Dasu ’12 recently returned from a trip to India, where he spent his summer doing background research for an app he is designing, now in the pilot stage, called Learning Dollars. The socially conscious app aims to help individuals in developing countries improve their economic situation by landing higher paying jobs.
Dasu said he plans to accomplish this by first helping users to learn English and then connecting them with helpful resources to find better employment. The higher paying jobs in developing countries include vocations such as hotel workers, airport employees, cashiers, clerks and call center staff – all of which require English language mastery.
While in India, Dasu worked exhaustively on an experiment to see whether Rosetta Stone (a $400 software program) could teach English to someone unable to speak the language.
In doing so, he noted the ways the software could be made more comprehensive and effective for users in the developing world. One of his test users was a middle-aged cook named Geeta, who dropped out of school after second grade and does not know how to read any language (but can speak two). Extensively working with her helped Dasu gain an understanding of what kind of education technology works in developing countries, especially with people who are illiterate and (like Geeta) may not have used a computer before.
Before conducting his work abroad, Dasu believed that, if successful, “a free smartphone app that uses Rosetta Stone’s method might be able to help people in the developing world to learn English in order to gain access to higher paying jobs and higher education.”
While he walked away from India with mixed feelings about the viability of the Rosetta Stone program, it did not deter him from moving forward with work on his own app. Indeed, the testing process allowed him to note ways in which the software could be improved for users in the developing world. He said he came up with the name, Learning Dollars, because it has “learning” in it (i.e., learning English) but at the same time, it sounds like “earning” (as in earning dollars). He said he hopes to get a minimum viable product (MVP) out in the coming month. The program uses a Google app engine setup and coincides with his goal to dedicate his life to fighting poverty, promoting democracy and protecting freedom.
“Often the dollar – which besides being the U.S. currency, is the international reserve currency – is associated with a strong purchasing power in many developing countries,” said Dasu, who recently graduated (after just two years) from Stanford University.
During his years at Harker, he participated in many extracurricular activities, including serving as the school’s ASB vice president.
NextSpot: A Mobile App for Fluid Group Events
When Daanish Jamal ’12 and Adhir Ravipati ’05 partnered to create NextSpot, a mobile app that helps coordinate everyday meet-ups, they wanted to create something that they and their peers would find useful in their own lives.
Now available in Apple’s app store, NextSpot streamlines the details of such things as grabbing lunch between classes, catching a movie at the end of the week, enjoying a day at the beach, playing a game of basketball or planning a night on the town. It is integrated with Yelp and saves past favorite meeting spots, among other features.
“Say you’re a college student, trying to get 20-25 friends over for a party. What we’ve learned is that you’re not going to create a Facebook event (or Evite or Eventbrite) because that sets too formal a tone. On the other hand, messaging/group messaging is casual but too unorganized. NextSpot fits this use case – casual, organized events,” Jamal explained.
“We released a beta this past spring to select fraternities and sororities at Georgetown, USC, Stanford, Oregon and UC Santa Barbara. The feedback we received was overwhelmingly positive, and we are gearing up for our launch in a few weeks as well as raising our next round of funding,” added Ravipati.
Generally, it takes at least a few months to develop an MVP with the core functions of an app, Jamal and Ravipati agreed. After releasing an MVP, it becomes a quicker process developing the product based on user feedback.
Presently the talented duo are devoting themselves full-time to working on NextSpot. Jamal has taken a leave of absence from Georgetown University and Ravipati left his previous startup earlier this year to focus on launching the app.
They believe that their time at Harker helped pave the way for their current perseverance. “Harker has a great track record of occupational and entrepreneurial success amongst its graduates. I don’t know if it can be narrowed down to one or two things, but rather developing a problem- solving mindset that challenges you to look at problems differently,” said Ravipati.
UPDATE: A memorial for Sylvia Harp will be held this Sunday, Aug. 10, in San Jose on the quad of Harker’s Saratoga campus. There will be bagels and mingling at 10 a.m.; memorial at 10:30 a.m.; and pizza and ice cream (Mrs. Harp’s favorites) and more mingling from 11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
This article originally appeared in the winter 2013 Harker Quarterly.
It was with deep sadness that Chris Nikoloff, head of school, announced the passing of cherished former faculty member Sylvia Harp, who died of liver cancer on March 29. Harp was a well-respected grade 8 English teacher who began teaching at Harker in 1986 and went on to become chair of the middle school’s English department before her retirement in 2003. “Her passion for her subject inspired and motivated students to excel, and many have cited her influence as defining and shaping their lifelong love and mastery of English,” recalled Nikoloff.
Born in New York City in the summer of 1939, Harp graduated from New Paltz Teacher’s College with a degree in education. She continued to tutor Harker students in English after her retirement from the school.
In the Harker community, former students, alumni and colleagues took to posting fond recollections of Harp on Facebook shortly after her passing. Middle school English teacher Mark Gelineau said, “I had the incredible fortune to not only be her student but also to start my career at Harker as an English teacher under her as department chair. Much of what I am now as a teacher and a writer, I attribute to her. She was a grand lady.”
“Sylvia Harp was a complex and intelligent woman. She treasured the power of words and feared all things math; one might have thought our friendship would have been impossible. Fortunately for me, a math teacher, Sylvia was able to set aside her sentiments about math and we shared a deep and very rich friendship,” noted Cindy Ellis, middle school head.
In April, Harp’s family held a memorial for her in Maryland. Plans are being made for a memorial in San Jose this summer at Harker, with the date to be determined. Those who would like to share memories and condolences for the family, or receive notice regarding the celebration event, are encouraged to email Nicole Hall at nicole.hall@harker.org.
This article originally appeared in the winter 2013 Harker Quarterly.
This fall, two festive happenings – the Harker Harvest Festival and Homecoming game – brought many alumni back to campus, where they enjoyed seeing old friends and catching up with the Harker community.
On Sept. 27, Harker’s Homecoming game was held on Davis Field, where alumni were warmly welcomed home during a familyfriendly tailgate party held in an end zone. A number of alumni turned out for the party, where they enjoyed dinner, mingled with faculty and staff, and watched the Eagles play.
Then on Oct. 13, alumni came out in recordbreaking numbers for the Harker Harvest Festival, the school’s 63rd annual Family & Alumni Picnic. More than 200 alumni attended the daylong event, held at the middle school. During the picnic there was a special area reserved just for alumni, with a delicious barbecue. This year alumni also were invited to volunteer at the picnic, and many signed up to work shifts at various booths.
This article originally appeared in the winter 2013 Harker Quarterly.
On Nov. 27, the alumni office sponsored two basketball games in which the varsity and junior varsity boys teams challenged alumni and faculty, respectively. Held in the early evening at the middle school campus, the faculty began the games by shooting a technical foul (which they had gained to make up for all the students’ missing homework) and proceeded to beat the junior varsity team. Then, varsity and alumni tipped off at 7 p.m. in front of a crowd of spectators, with varsity emerging victorious.
Although the exciting games were held over break, 14 alumni who were in town got in on the action while nearly 100 spectators cheered from the stands. A good time was had by all at the inaugural event. To mark the occasion, complimentary T-shirts were handed out and alumni sold snacks to benefit the school’s endowment fund.
This article originally appeared in the winter 2013 Harker Quarterly.
Each year “grade 13” parents gather to help the alumni office assemble college care packages for current college freshmen. This year, 28 parents united to send an array of interesting items to the Class of 2013.
Among the products included in this year’s packages were friendly notes and well wishes from advisors, teachers and the class dean, as well as sweet and salty snacks. The packages were designed to give the former students a boost of encouragement just before their finals began, and help them finish out their first semesters away on a bright note.
Also in the packages were custom-designed Goldfish crackers with the message, “You’re always a part of our school,” custom alumni M&Ms and a bookmark printed with the “Top 10 things to do in your college library,” courtesy of Harker’s librarians.
According to MaryEllis Deacon, director of alumni relations, Class of 2013 agents Nikhil Panu, Nicholas Chuang and Kathir Sundaraj were instrumental in helping to get the care packages to the alumni’s university mailboxes.
“We wanted to congratulate the students on completing their first few months of college and let them know that we are thinking of them and wishing them the best while they are away. The care packages were assembled with love,” Deacon said, adding that she hopes the packages help send the message to alumni that they are free to come back and visit the Harker campus at any time. “We would love to see them and hear how they are doing!”
This article originally appeared in the winter 2013 Harker Quarterly.
Graduates of The Harker Conservatory’s certificate program have spread out across the United States to pursue the arts. 2013 alumni are dancing, singing, playing music and making theater at top universities. For some, that means indulging in their art as an extracurricular activity as they pursue academic disciplines. For others, it means a major or a minor as they make art a part of their college studies. A select few are building on their solid foundation from The Harker Conservatory as they train to pursue their work professionally. Here are the stories of three such alumnae, who headed off to the East Coast to pursue their dreams of acting.
Cristina Jerney headed to Northeastern University in Boston for intimate theater training and an interdisciplinary curriculum. “Northeastern’s lots of fun,” Jerney says. “[The program’s] small, but it’s growing.” The program’s small size means the teachers can work very closely with their students, offering “a lot of individual attention.”
This semester, Jerney acted in Calderón de la Barca’s “The Phantom Lady.” She played a variety of ensemble roles in the 1629 Spanish piece, which featured heavy doses of romance and sword-fighting. In classes, the actors work to release themselves from attitudes of judgment, engaging in exercises that test their ability to commit and to withstand stress. Her curriculum is all theater classes with the exception of a writing class. In her next semester, Jerney will begin to incorporate her multidisciplinary interests, branching out into film and media. She calls Northeastern a “great opportunity to study what I love.”
When a friend from Harker visited her, the two discussed just how well Harker had prepared them. Jerney recalls traveling to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, where the Harker Conservatory instituted a rule that if students were even a minute late for their call, they would not be allowed to perform in the show that night. That level of discipline instilled a professionalism in Jerney that has served her well at Northeastern, where she has been able to build on skills from Harker in an environment where all of the students around her are pursuing arts for their education. “I like understanding people, and I like understanding what they do and why they do it,” she says. That sentiment is the basis for her love of performing, and why she wants to be a professional actress.
Apurva Tandon is at Williams College in Massachusetts, and so far, she has been bowled over. “Oh, my gosh, they have everything,” she raves. “It’s so professional, it’s crazy. They have a scene shop. They have a costume shop. They have people working there all the time. There are three different theaters in one building. And they’re beautiful. To someone who does theater, it’s a goldmine.”
Tandon has been expanding her horizons and taking on exciting and inventive projects. A highlight of her first semester has been a production she acted in of “Fefu and Her Friends,” an experimental play by Maria Irene Fornés that takes place in multiple rooms of a house, all at once, with the audience divided into groups and watching different scenes in different locations. Tandon’s production took place in a real house on Williams’ campus, making for a wholly intimate performance. “I had a scene where I was sitting on a couch in a living room, and the audience was literally told to sit on the couch next to me and my scene partner.” The experience was a revelation for Tandon, one that taught her more about feminism and gave her the most modern show she had ever been in. “They’re so open to trying new things” at Williams. “It’s very, very open. Very experimental.”
Tandon credits Harker for having prepared her extraordinarily well for her theater classes. At the moment, her theater course load builds on the Study of Theater class she took with Jeffrey Draper. “I remember all of this from my freshman year at Harker!” she sometimes finds herself thinking.
For Tandon, the university experience has been all about getting involved. “I’ve literally tried out for everything,” she boasts. “If you’re not afraid to try out for everything and put yourself out there, something will come to you. Honestly, I just want to be involved with everything I can.” So far, that’s meant working with both the department and a studentrun group. She even performed an improv show in a storefront window on one of Williamstown’s main streets. Says Tandon, “I’m definitely getting to know the wonders of sitespecific work!”
You can find Hannah Prutton ’13 on Broadway these days – that’s 890 Broadway, at the tip of Union Square in New York City, where she trains with The Meisner Extension at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. It’s an intensive program devoted to the teachings of acting guru Sanford Meisner, who divined a series of exercises and philosophies to aid actors in living truthfully under imaginary circumstances. “It’s very stressful,” says Prutton, “but really rewarding.”
Classes begin for Prutton in the early morning with two hours of Suzuki training, where a teacher she calls an “absolute genius” leads the actors in a physical theater technique inspired by Greek theater and martial arts. The technique, which takes an enormous amount of energy and features copious amounts of stomping, is designed to increase an actor’s natural awareness of his or her body. From there, she is off to voice and speech class, where the young lady with British parents hopes to finally “learn a proper American accent!” That brings her to three hours of acting training, where the students engage in a series of repetition-based exercises. These “allow our scene partner to influence our emotions, and to have that result in truth on the stage,” says Prutton. Because people develop “habits to avoid being hurt or being honest with other people,” the actors use the practices to lean into being truthful with partners and let go of the barriers to honest emotion. “When you actually get to the moment where you really, truly feel what they’re saying to you, it’s horrible,” says Prutton of the painful breakthroughs the technique inspires. “But amazing afterwards.”
Freshmen actors at New York University are forbidden from doing plays in their first year to prevent them from falling back on old habits. In this way, the students are given a full year to immerse themselves in their new training, letting go of how they used to act in high school and rebuilding their processes in the image of their professional training. According to Prutton, the actors leave behind “older habits that we’ve accumulated over the years” in favor of finding their “most truthful selves.” Her second year, she will begin character work in her studio and begin testing out what she has learned in productions.
For Prutton, “Harker is the reason I’m so passionate about theater.” Her sophomore year, Prutton traveled to Scotland for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe with the Harker Conservatory to perform the musical “Pippin.” Now, she can leave her studio after a full day of classes, walk across the street to board the subway, and hop uptown to Times Square to catch “Pippin” on Broadway. Overall, she is learning a lot in her freshman year. “The technique that we’re learning is very compatible with my style as an actor,” she says. “I really love it.”
This article originally appeared in the summer 2014 Harker Quarterly.
The Class of 2014 gathered in Nichols Hall atrium May 22 where they were welcomed into the Harker Alumni Association and reflected on their final year as Harker students. Students also received prizes for participating in the senior trip’s scavenger hunt, volleyball tournament and sandcastle-building contest.
The seniors were introduced to their class agents, who will be responsible for acting as liaisons between Harker’s alumni department and the 2014 graduates.
In preparation for college, each of the seniors received the now-traditional laundry bag along with instructions on how to do their own laundry. Finally, the soon-to-be-graduates wrote special messages to friends, teachers, parents and others to be placed in a time capsule that will be opened at the Class of 2014’s 10-year reunion.
This article originally appeared in the summer 2014 Harker Quarterly.
This past spring, current and alumni families sponsored receptions in cities around the world to get the word out about the school’s long-running and highly successful English Language Institute (ELI).
Held on both the lower and upper school campuses, ELI provides overseas students with the opportunity to learn and practice their English skills, enabling many participants to go on to attend top American and international schools.
The receptions provided an opportunity for interested families to meet both Anthony Wood, ELI director, and Joe Rosenthal, Harker’s executive director of advancement, and learn about the features and benefits of the program. In March and April, ELI receptions took place in Russia, Turkey, China, Korea, Taiwan and Japan.
Rosenthal, who directed the school’s former elementary boarding program for 20 years, is a frequent guest lecturer to the ELI program on the topic of studying in the United States.
“The ELI receptions are a wonderful way to get the word out about the quality of our program,” he said. Last summer, more than 60 students enrolled in the secondary division and a record-breaking 55 enrolled in the primary division.
New to the program this year will be a “Very Interesting Places” (VIP) tour. The optional VIP offering, available to all ELI students (ages 6-16), will take place at the conclusion of the program’s regular five-week academic session. The tour will take students around Silicon Valley and the Bay Area to visit theme parks, museums, companies, school campuses and more. It will be capped off with an overnight trip to Yosemite.