More than 400 attendees arrived to experience the 2012 Harker Research Symposium on April 28, which featured some of the most fascinating speakers and presentations in the symposium’s six-year history.
Legendary entrepreneur Vinod Khosla was this year’s morning keynote speaker. “We were very fortunate that someone of Mr. Khosla’s stature would take time from a busy schedule and from a beautiful Saturday to come and share his thoughts with our students,” said science department chair and symposium coordinator Anita Chetty. “I think that what he had to say certainly got us all thinking about the present as well as the future.”
Giving a joint presentation were John West and Atul Butte. West, a Harker parent and CEO of genome analysis company Personalis, was joined by Butte via video conference from Boston. West and Butte, chief of the division of systems medicine and associate professor of pediatrics, medicine and by courtesy, computer science at Stanford University, discussed the collaborative project between a team of Stanford scientists led by Butte and West’s former company, Illumina, to sequence the West family’s DNA. This in turn led to an effort to develop software that would make genome sequencing accessible to more people.
This year’s alumni presentation was given by Jacob Bongers ’07, son of Harker art department chair Jaap Bongers and a 2011 graduate from the University of Southern California. Bongers discussed his passion for archaeology and his related field work and research, which led him to being published in the Journal of Archaeological Science while still an undergraduate. “Archaeology has been a passion of mine since I was a kid and since I have a tremendous amount of experience performing field work and conducting research within the scope of archaeology, I felt like I had a lot offer to anyone interested in learning about this fascinating field of study,” Bongers said. “I also wanted to talk about a field of study that, at Harker, may not get as much press as engineering, biology or medical research.”
Attendance remained high for the duration of the event, and the high caliber of this year’s student presentations kept visitors highly interested. “Every classroom was standing-room only,” Chetty said.
One presenter at this year’s symposium, Alex Najibi, grade 12, said attending last year’s symposium provided the spark for his own interest in research. “I’ve always been interested in science and research, but when I went to the symposium last year, not as a presenter, I was really amazed by how many projects the other students were doing,” he said.
Although he was not sure at first that many people would find his presentation on particle physics engaging or accessible enough, he quickly discovered that his audience found the topic quite compelling. “Particle physics isn’t really the most accessible topic, but I was pleasantly surprised at how quickly nearly everyone understood what I was discussing,” he said.
Because of the expected high attendance, the symposium this year was arranged to create better foot traffic, and a tent was set up between Nichols Hall and Dobbins Hall to display the many impressive poster presentations by upper school students. The Dobbins Hall gallery was set aside for middle school student poster presentations.
Exhibitors occupied the atrium at Nichols Hall, demonstrating many scientific and technological advancements and offering a peek into the kinds of careers that are open to students interested in scientific research. This year’s exhibitors were Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, The Triple Helix, East Bay Cardiovascular and Thoracic Associates, Lumoback, Symmetricom, Twincreeks Technologies, Nvidia, Autodesk, Ericsson, Hunter Laboratories and Rector Porsche Audi.
“The industry piece is very important because it allows our students to see the connection between research and career, research and the economy of our valley,” Chetty said. “The exhibitors were so excited about their companies and their products and their research and development. That enthusiasm was really infectious.”
In addition to the student clubs such as WiSTEM (Women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) and the chemistry club, who were instrumental organizing this year’s event, Chetty was also thankful for the various departments that came together to make sure the Harker Research Symposium had another successful year.
“The symposium recognizes what our teachers and our students do throughout the year, and it’s a celebration of that work,” she said. “But the actual event also brings together the other departments that make our school run: facilities, technology, Office of Communication, the kitchen, the security, all of those departments come together to run this huge event.”
Harker senior Kathryn (Katie) Siegel was named a 2012 Presidential Scholar this week. Siegel has excelled both academically and in her chosen activities at Harker.
“We are all proud of Katie’s accomplishments and recognition,” said Chris Nikoloff, head of school. “Her achievements across so many domains truly reflect the spirit of the Harker mission. Congratulations.”
Each year the U.S. Department of Education names one male and one female Scholar from each state, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. In addition, two students are selected from families living abroad, 15 students are chosen at large and 20 are chosen who specialize in visual and performing arts.
Siegel named Susan King, upper school computer science teacher, as her most influential Harker teacher, and King can accompany Siegel to Washington, D.C., where Siegel will receive her Presidential Scholar medallion and King will be honored with a Teacher Recognition Award from the U.S. Department of Education.
“Katie Siegel is a delightful, energetic, enthusiastic student,” said King. “Without a hint of conceit or meekness, she is able to clearly communicate a problem, precipitate a discussion, consider options, and thank participants for their suggestions.
“I do know that in her collegiate career, there will be professors who will be grateful and delighted that she crossed their thresholds. Katie’s quintessence – her bountiful energy, tenacity, curiosity, intelligence and temperament – makes her a natural born scientist and scholar.”
Siegel is Harker’s fourth Presidential Scholar, and its first female so honored. In 2006, Samantha Fang ’06, was named a Presidential Scholar in the Arts, Senan Ebrahim ’08 was named a Presidential Scholar in 2008 and Daniel J. Kim ’09 a Presidential Scholar in 2009.
About 3,000 academic candidates are eligible based on evaluation of their College Board SAT or ACT assessment scores. Students interested in joining the arts portion of the Presidential Scholar program must register for youngARTS, a program by the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts, which then nominates students as Presidential Scholars.
Pat Walsh, grade 5 math teacher, took about 30 students to an Oakland A’s baseball game in late April as his contribution to the 2011 Harker Family & Alumni Picnic. Everyone had a great time!
Harker’s musical talent shined in the recent campuswide Spring Concert, presented by the school’s music departments. Lower, middle and upper school orchestras united on stage, to the delight of friends, parents and faculty members in attendance.
Held in mid-April at the Mexican Heritage Theater in San Jose, the show featured a unique pre-concert lobby music performance by the middle school chamber ensembles. Kicking off the concert, the Lower School String Ensemble opened with “Burst,” by Brian Balmages, and “Battle of the Ancient Dragons,” by Rob Grice.
The Lower School Orchestra then performed two numbers before being joined by the Grade 6 Winds, Strings and Orchestra. Then the Grade 7-8 Orchestra took the stage, performing Johannes Brahms’ “Variations on a Theme,” and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Phantom of the Opera.”
A special treat was the K-12 combined orchestra, which played a beautiful rendition of “Hornpipe” from Handel’s “Water Music.” A brief intermission followed after which the The Harker School Orchestra showed their range of skill by performing such high-level pieces as Felix Mendelssohn’s “Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
The Spring Concert was a joy to attend and skillfully directed by its respective upper, middle and lower school conductors: Chris Florio, David Hart, Louis Hoffman and Toni Woodruff.
“We had a very challenging program and the students truly stepped up their game for a wonderful performance. I was especially happy to honor such an amazing group of musicians. This class has been a huge part of the growth of the orchestra program and it was fitting that they ended with such a wonderful concert,” said Florio.
Student singers from every campus gathered at San Jose’s Mexican Heritage Theater in late March for this year’s United Voices concert, which brought all of Harker’s talented vocal groups to one stage.
Middle school choirs Harmonics and Vivace kicked off the show by teaming up on a medley of the traditional Shaker song “Simple Gifts” and the famous “Canon in D” by Johann Pachelbel, directed by Dave Hart. The two groups would also perform individually later that evening. Harmonics, directed by Monica Colletti and Roxann Hagemeyer, wowed the audience with their rendition of “Time Warp” from “The Rocky Horror Show,” and Dave Hart directed Vivace, who performed the traditional “Down By the Riverside,” with musical accompaniment from guitarist Nikhil Parmar, bassist Jonathan Yiu, and drummer Rohan Desikan, all grade 8, pianist Michael Tseitlin, grade 7.
Dynamics, the grade 6 show choir directed by Roxann Hagemeyer, was the third middle school group to perform during the evening, singing Ray Henderson and Mort Dixon’s standard “Bye Bye Blackbird” and “The Frim Fram Sauce,” made famous by the Nat King Cole Trio.
The lower school was represented by the Bucknall Choir, made up of students in grades 4 and 5, who sang the Scottish folk song “Ally Bally” and the American folk song “Red River Dances.” Donna Boucher, grade 5, provided accompaniment on flute.
The first of the upper school groups to perform was Susan Nace’s group Camerata, singing 17th century composer Johannes Jeep’s “Musica, dieganz lieblich Kunst” (“Music, the most lovely art”) before switching gears to the spiritual “I Hear a Voice A-Prayin’,” by Houston Bright.
Cantilena, also directed by Nace, sang a diverse set of three songs, beginning with the stirring traditional “Hark! I Hear the Harps Eternal,” followed by the haunting “Lan Hua Hua” by Liu Zhuang and concluding with Nace’s own arrangement of the Roger Nixon piece “Carol.” The late Nixon’s granddaughter, Bridget, grade 12, sings in the ensemble.
Jennifer Cowgill directed the upper school’s choir Bel Canto, who performed the spiritual “Guide My Wayfarin’ Feet” and the Cuban folk song “Guantanamera.” Their set also included impressive solo performances by Katia Mironova, grade 10, Justin Gerard, grade 11 and Jeton Gutierrez-Bujari, grade 9.
Downbeat, the upper school’s show choir, took the stage just before the finale. Directed by Laura-Lang Ree and Catherine Snider, the well-practiced group first performed a spirituals medley, combining “Just Across That River” and “Every Time I Feel the Spirit.” Their set concluded with a rousing rendition of The Doobie Brothers’ “Listen to the Music.”
Finally, all of the evening’s singers assembled on the stage to perform “Tshotsholoza,” a South African folk song with African-style drumming provided by Vivace’s rhythm section. The performers received a much-deserved standing ovation not just for the stunning finale, but also for the musicianship they displayed throughout the evening.
Harker will host a special report from Congressman Mike Honda’s Youth Advisory Board on the timely topic of social networking and privacy concerns. The board will report their findings at the event, slated to occur on Sun., May 6, at noon, in the upper school’s Nichols Hall auditorium.
In addition to Congressman Honda and student speakers, special guest panelists will include a U.S. Secret Service agent, a Facebook employee and an Egyptian activist.
The Secret Service agent will be discussing issues relating to privacy online, including what information is used by hackers and identity thieves, how much information can be accessed by law enforcement and how online investigations of people are conducted.
The Facebook employee will talk about the growing problem of cyber bullying, and what measures are being taken to address it.
The Egyptian activist will speak on the impact that Facebook, Twitter and other social networks are having on the Arab Spring, as well as their uses as communications tools.
The Youth Advisory Board comprises students from approximately 20 local district high schools. Dylan Qian is Harker’s senior student representative this year.
Although the event is focused primarily on students, it is open to the public and parents are welcome to attend.
The seventh annual Harker Research Symposium, April 28, will feature renowned entrepreneur and founding CEO of Sun Microsystems Vinod Khosla as its morning keynote speaker. The symposium, running from 8 a.m.-4:30 p.m., will once again bring Harker students and alumni together at the upper school campus to share their love of scientific research.
The afternoon keynote address will be delivered by two speakers: Dr. Atul Butte, chief of the division of systems medicine and associate professor of pediatrics, medicine and, by courtesy, computer science, at Stanford University and Lucille Packard Children’s Hospital; and John West, Harker parent and CEO of genome analysis company Personalis. Butte was one of four Stanford faculty members who orchestrated a collaboration between the university and Personalis to sequence the DNA of the West family (Anne ’11, Paul, grade 12).
Harker alumnus Jacob Bongers ’07 will also make a special appearance to discuss his experiences conducting and publishing research as an undergraduate student in archaeology at the University of Southern California.
A central component of every Harker Research Symposium is the chance for students to present their research to industry professionals, parents and fellow students. Dozens of talks will be given by Harker upper school students, and more than 30 poster sessions by middle and upper school students will be on display at various points throughout the day. Harker alumni will also deliver talks via video conference from research labs all over the country.
As with last year’s symposium, this year several exhibitors will be offering interactive displays for the hundreds of annual attendees. This year’s exhibitors at posting time include Autodesk, East Bay Cardiovascular Surgeons, Ericsson, Genophen, Hewlett-Packard, Hunter Laboratories, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Rector Motors, Symmetricom and Twin Creeks Technologies.
The Harker Research Symposium is open to all members of the Harker community. Additional information, including a schedule, is available at http://www.harker.org/symposium. For more information on student presentations, contact Harker science department chair Anita Chetty at anitac@harker.org. For exhibitor information, contact symposium@harker.org.
Lauri Vaughan, upper school librarian and vice-president of the Bay Area Independent School Librarians, spoke in Washington, D.C., at the 27th annual Computer in Libraries conference, the most comprehensive conference on library technology in the country. Vaughan, who is in her sixth year at Harker, presented a talk titled “The eBook Market for K-12 Schools.”
EBook use at Harker is quickly growing. “When I arrived at Harker we owned 10 eBooks,” said Vaughan. “Now we own hundreds of eBooks and pay annual subscription fees for access to thousands more.” Most eBooks purchased or subscribed to by the Harker library are used for research projects of all sizes. The lower school recently purchased a set of eBooks it will likely use more heavily in classroom instruction.
The eBooks used at Harker are not necessarily the same kind one might find people reading on their beach vacations. “When most folks think of eBooks, they think of a book they buy for their reader – their Kindle or Nook or whatnot,” said Vaughan. “When I think of eBooks, I think about books that all my students can access via the Internet at the same time for research – it’s a very different market.”
Because Harker’s eBooks are accessible any time for any computer with an Internet connection, students have quickly taken to them. “We (my fellow librarians and I) are always amazed at how readily Harker students navigate around different eBook environments,” said Vaughan.
Though there are many benefits to eBooks, they also come with their own set of drawbacks. Many students believe that if they are reading information on a computer monitor it must be relatively new. However, many eBooks are simply digitized versions of material published decades ago. “We hope our students are thinking critically about information in all its forms as this is an especially important skill,” said Vaughan.
Another potential issue is rushed reading. “Studies have shown that a person is much more likely to read something slowly and thoroughly in print than they would the same thing on a computer screen,” said Vaughan. “While we like the ease of accessibility of information that eBooks provide, we also like to encourage thoughtful and deep reading of content.”
Though challenges exist, eBooks are clearly a valuable supplement to the Harker library system.
Last month the lower, middle and upper school jazz bands united to present an Evening of Jazz. Held at the Blackford Theater, the event was led by Louis Hoffman, Dave Hart and Chris Florio, the directors of the jazz bands for each campus.
Kicking off the evening, The Harker School Jazz Band performed “Two Seconds to Midnight” by composer Alan Baylock and “Harker Swing” by David Len Allen, arranged by Harker music aide Paul Woodruff.
Those numbers were followed by the Lower School Jazz Ensemble’s rendition of John Coltrane’s “Equinox” and Herbie Hancock’s “Watermelon Man.” Then, the Middle School Jazz Band performed the more traditional numbers “Motherless Child” and “When the Saints Go Marching In.”
Following a brief intermission and further performances by all three ensembles came the combined finale, “Work Song” by Nat Adderley. Running the gamut from rousing, upbeat swing numbers to slow, soulful ballads, Evening of Jazz showcased the breadth of Harker student talent and entertained and delighted its audience.
Staff for the show included Brian Larsen, production manager, and Paul Vallerga, technical director. The Harker performing arts department noted its gratitude to contributors to the school’s annual campaign, which helps make programs such as this possible.
The Harker School will host the first Green Teen Summit, a student-organized conference for Bay Area high school students interested in environmental activism, on Sat., April 14, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. The half-day conference, held at the upper school campus, will feature inspirational speakers and a wealth of resources to help young people get involved with environmental efforts at school and abroad. Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org, will be one of two keynote speakers at the event. Called “the planet’s best green journalist” by Time magazine and “probably the country’s most important environmentalist” by the Boston Globe, McKibben has authored a dozen books on environmental issues, and started 350.org as a grassroots initiative to end the climate crisis. Since 2009, 350.org has organized 15,000 rallies in 189 countries. The conference’s second keynote speaker, Ethan Burke, is co-founder and director of operations for BioTour, a nonprofit organization that travels across the country via school buses modified to run on vegetable oil and solar energy. BioTour has crisscrossed the nation for two-and-a-half years, giving presentations on the environment at more than 150 universities, high schools and other venues. In addition to the speakers, the Green Teen Summit will offer training and resources provided by the Alliance for Climate Education, which organizes high school assemblies on climate-related issues. Students will also be able to enjoy lunch with green business leaders and attend workshops. The Green Teen Summit was organized by Harker students Daniela Lapidous and Shreya Indukuri, both grade 12, who received a grant in 2009 to improve Harker’s energy efficiency. They used the grant money to place insulating film on upper school classroom windows and start an organic garden. Later, they were instrumental in getting smart meters installed at the lower and upper school campuses to monitor and reduce energy usage. The students have received extensive press coverage for their efforts, and appeared at the Clinton Global Initiative last year as part of a keynote panel. This event is open to all high school students and campus green club advisors. A continental breakfast and vegetarian lunch is included in the ticket price. Tickets are $10 for students and $15 for adults (plus a nominal ticketing fee) and can be purchased at the Green Teen Summit’s Eventbrite page.