A group of 27 upper school students traveled to Ashland, Ore., for the annual visit to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF), a professional theater company that specializes in classic and contemporary works. There, the students attended the OSF production of Shakespeare’s “Antony and Cleopatra,” Lynn Nottage’s “Sweat” and Stan Lai’s “Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land.”
In addition, the OSF provided intensive workshops, run by OSF actors and teachers, to enhance the students’ overall understanding of the plays they attended. In one session, students learned about the literary concept of the hero’s journey by having a student cover their eyes while other students acted as guides.
Read more about Harker’s annual trip to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in the upcoming Winter 2015 issue of the Harker Quarterly.
Eleven Harker students recently passed the auditions for the 2015 American Choir Directors Association Regional Honor Choir. Each student was judged in several key categories, including solo presentation, musicality and tone quality. These students are also now eligible to become members of the All-State Honor Choir and National Honor Choir.
Senior Shay Lari-Hosain feels fortunate to be able to spend his summers in Pakistan, performing meaningful outreach work under the direction of a recipient of a United Nations recognition award for the promotion of culture and peace. Especially since the recipient happens to be his grandmother.
Every year, shortly after school lets out, Lari-Hosain heads off to work at the Heritage Foundation of Pakistan (HFP), a humanitarian organization co-founded by his grandmother, Yasmeen Lari. He speaks with pride of Lari, who made history as Pakistan’s first woman architect. Most recently, she was one of a few architects featured in an Architectural Digest article.
In 2000, Lari retired from corporate practice and turned her attention to humanitarian work/poverty alleviation, Lari-Hosain explains. “That shift requires completely different types of architecture. Starting early on in her life, she was designing glass and metal corporate buildings and urban housing in Karachi … and now [she] designs environmentally sustainable, small housing units for completely different, rural settings,” he said.
Lari co-founded the HFP in 1980 with her husband, noted historian Suhail Zaheer Lari. Her profile has been included among 60 women from around the world who have contributed the most toward the objectives of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Last year, the Hilal-i-Imtiaz (The Crescent of Distinction) award was conferred on her by the government of Pakistan.
“I’ve been working at her foundation since I was an elementary school kid,” said Lari-Hosain, who most recently has done extensive marketing work for HFP’s Karachi office.
Lari-Hosain currently keeps busy as editor-in-chief of Wingspan, the upper school’s long-form magazine. Last February he brought his grandmother to Harker as a guest speaker, sharing her experiences with upper school journalists. She spoke about her work with education awareness programs, including women’s empowerment. She also shared stories about time spent training former militants, putting them on a different path to be more productive in rural society.
“My grandmother also has spoken on multiple occasions in Geneva (at the UN). In the past, she taught seminars at MIT and Harvard on architecture,” noted Lari-Hosain.
Lari-Hosain also worked to bring Al-Jazeera America’s “The Stream” co-host and Harker alumnus Wajahat Ali (MS ’94) to the upper school. Ali discussed his life as a Muslim-American during an assembly held on Sept. 19 in the gym. Lari-Hosain had the pleasure of introducing Ali during that assembly.
Last spring Lari-Hosain interviewed Ali for a Wingspan story regarding issues that Muslim-Americans face. That article got picked up by a Pakistani paper called DAWN, the leading English newspaper in Pakistan. Lari-Hosain’s article is linked here online.
Lari-Hosain said he was thrilled that Ali’s visit was such a success, and still generating continued conversation among upper school students and faculty alike. (Stay tuned for further coverage of Ali’s visit to Harker in the alumni section of the upcoming Winter 2015 issue of Harker Quarterly.)
James Gatenby, LinkedIn’s manager of web development (talent solutions), and Asha Chandrashekaran, senior software test engineer at LinkedIn (both pictured, standing), spoke at a CareerConnect workshop in early October on how to develop a great LinkedIn profile and build a network. The Innovation Center was packed! Harker has a special school LinkedIn page http://bit.ly/1Lq6HzA for students, alumni and others affiliated with the school and a separate LinkedIn page for general needs and recruitment: http://bit.ly/1jeUJSV
At a ceremony held at the Nichols Hall atrium on Tuesday, 30 Harker students were inducted into the Harker chapter of the National Honor Society (NHS), which recognizes high school students nationwide for their academic excellence, service and leadership.
This year’s NHS inductees are:
Aashe Sreekumar, grade 10; Aditya Dhar, grade 11; Akshaya Vemuri, grade 10; Alexander Lam, grade 11; Alex Wang, grade 10; Amy Jin, grade 10; Andrew Rule, grade 11; Anika Jain, grade 11; Arindam Ghosh, grade 10; Arjun Subramaniam, grade 11; Derek Kuo, grade 10; Divija Bhimaraju, grade 10; Emily Chen, grade 10; Jacqueline He, grade 10; Eric Jeong, grade 10; Joanna Lin, grade 10; Julia Huang, grade 10; Justin Su, grade 10; Kaitlin Hsu, grade 10; Kendall Ka, grade 11; Kevin Xu, grade 10; Mary Najibi, grade 12; Melinda Wisdom, grade 11; Mona Lee, grade 10; Morgan Douglas, grade 10; Karena Kong, grade 10; Nikhil Manglik, grade 11; Sahana Srinivasan, grade 10; Sandip Nirmel, grade 11; and Ziwen Ye, grade 11.
Football It was an outstanding Homecoming night on Saturday, with varsity football defeating Santa Cruz 23-13 – in front of what some say was the largest crowd to witness a Harker football game on Davis Field. Freshman Demonte Aleem scored two touchdowns, while sophomore Anthony Contreras scored from a pass by classmate Nate Kelly. Senior Oisin Coveney was perfect on extra points as well. The team is now an impressive 4-1 as it travels to Oakland Saturday to face Emery High School in its second league match of the season.
Volleyball Your 15th ranked girls varsity volleyball team had an outstanding victory last week at Menlo 32-30, 25-20 and 25-23 to take sole possession of first place in league. Junior Rachel Cheng led defensively with 37 digs and senior Shannon Richardson had 18 kills. The girls travel to Notre Dame today at 5:45 p.m. and host Mercy Thursday at 5:45 p.m. Come cheer on your high-flying Eagles!!
Tennis The girls varsity tennis team soundly defeated Pinewood and Crystal Springs last week, and had a solid showing in a losing effort to Bishop O’Dowd at the prestigious Battle of the Bay Tournament. The girls bounced back with a 5-2 victory over Tamalpais to improve to 4-1 overall. They have three matches this week, with a tough matchup against Sacred Heart Prep today at 4 p.m. at the Santa Clara Tennis Center. Come out and support the team!
Cross Country Varsity girls cross country placed second overall at their first league meet last week with junior Niki Iyer taking first place individually and senior Alex Dellar placing 12th. Key contributors were our four freshman stars: Anika Rajamani, Lilia Gonzales, Alycia Cary and Aneesha Kumar. The top three cross country boys, al seniors, made major improvements from a year ago. Connor O’Neill improved by 2:47, Jack Rothschild dropped 54 seconds and Lev Sepetov ran 1:21 faster than last year’s run at San Bruno Mountain. The teams compete Saturday at Crystal Springs.
Water Polo Girls water polo lost to Santa Clara last week but earned its second win of the season with a 6-4 victory over Wilcox. The boys team defeated Lynbrook and Santa Clara last week to improve to 5-4 overall. Both boys and girls host Milpitas today at the Singh Aquatic Center. The girls varsity team plays at 4:30 p.m., while the boys play at 6:45 p.m.
Golf Girls golf had victories over Sacred Heart Prep and Mercy last week to improve to 3-1 overall.
A blustery early autumn evening set the stage for Harker’s 2015 Homecoming celebration, and the football team turned it into a great night with a 23-13 hard-fought win. This year’s Homecoming saw people from across the Harker community gather at the upper school campus to cheer on the Harker Eagles football squad as it faced off against Santa Cruz at Davis Field. In addition to the game, Homecoming offered a chance for Harker community members – be they students, parents, alumni, faculty or staff – to enjoy a fun evening of socializing and reminiscing.
“It’s a wonderful opportunity for the whole community to get together,” said Jennifer Gargano, assistant head of school for academic affairs. “From preschool to the high school, everyone can come together as one community, to support our students in the game, but also in the various ways that they’re participating, whether it’s musically or through cheer or selling pizza.”
Attendees began arriving in droves as early as two hours before the 7 p.m. kickoff, enjoying a variety of foods from Ms. Carley’s Café and a delicious array prepared by the Harker kitchens – the staff had been at work since 7 a.m. preparing for the big event – alongside pizza and candy sold by Harker students. Lower, middle and upper school campuses had tables filled with confections and chips for parents and students to snack on, while Harker Alumni had a special area with white linen and great food, which enjoyed a steady stream of visitors. “It’s really exciting, and everyone’s having fun,” said Elizabeth Yang, grade 9, who was selling candy to raise funds for her class.
Prior to the game, the early arrivals enjoyed special performances by Harker’s junior cheerleaders and the time-honored Eaglets Fly-By. Just before the game, several of Harker’s vocal groups, directed by lower school performing arts teacher Carena Montany, sang “The Harker School Song” and “The Star-Spangled Banner.” The Harker School Orchestra supplied its usual accompaniment and the varsity cheerleaders maintained a steady blast of cheerful encouragement from the sidelines.
The first half of the game was hotly contested, with Santa Cruz reaching the endzone early, followed by a strong answer from Harker, which scored a safety and a touchdown to take a 9-6 lead at halftime.
During the halftime, Harker’s cheer squad and varsity dancers gave energetic, crowd-pleasing performances. Shortly after, this year’s homecoming court took the field, with seniors Edward Sheu and Stephanie Huang named the 2015 Homecoming King and Queen.
In the second half, both teams pushed hard. Santa Cruz took back the lead to make it 13-9. Push literally came to shove in the fourth quarter as each team pushed their luck on fourth-down situations trying to hang on to the ball to get a drive going. Finally, with 10:40 remaining in the game, Harker marched up the field and added 7 to make it 16-13. For the next eight minutes the crowd was on the edge of their seats knowing if Santa Cruz found the right gap the score would reverse, again.
Indeed, the ball changed hands several times, but neither team was able to capitalize until very late in the fourth quarter when Harker put paid to the match with a great run to make it 23-13 with less than two minutes left. Harker D was fired up and bottled up Santa Cruz, nailing the lid on the win. Great night out with a big, lively crowd! Check Facebook and Instagram for photos and video clips from the game, and search on #harkerhomecoming in both sites for a gallery of photos and clips. (Feel free to hashtag your own homecoming photos to add to the gallery!) This story will be updated with a photo gallery as well on Monday. Huge congrats to the football team including coaching, training and other support staff for a great, well-fought game! Go Eagles!
Update – Mar. 27, 2015
Today, Andrew was the subject of a news story in ChinaDaily, and earlier this week was featured in a TV news segment on the Chinese language network Sinovision.
Mar. 10, 2015
Harker senior Andrew Jin won a first-place medal of distinction in the Global Good category in this year’s Intel Science Talent Search. He is the first Harker student since 2006 to be named a winner in the competition and is one of three first-place winners in this year’s Intel STS, each of them claiming a prize of $150,000.
Jin, along with seniors Steven Wang and Rohith Kuditipudi, were named finalists in this year’s Intel STS in January, making Harker the only school nationwide with more than two finalists. Harker had 15 Intel semifinalists, the most of any school in the country.
Last week, the National Merit Scholarship Corporation announced that 51 Harker seniors qualified as semifinalists in the 2016 National Merit Scholarship Program. These students scored in the top 1 percent nationwide on the Preliminary SAT, which was taken last year by about 1.5 million grade 11 students. Overall, 62 percent of Harker’s Class of 2016 scored in the top 3 percent nationally.
The semifinalists are as follows, in alphabetical order by last name:
Vivek Bharadwaj, Jonathan Dai, Rohan Daran, Rohan Desikan, Victoria Ding, Ayushi Gautam, Grace Guan, Prithvi Gudapati, Cynthia Hao, Shannon Hong, Angela Huang, Kaylan Huang, Stephanie Huang, Joshua Hung, Raghav Jain, Maya Jeyendran, Abhinav Ketineni, Kristen Ko, Vineet Kosaraju, Janet Lee, Jason Lee, Adele Li, Lisa Liu, Evan Lohn, Anthony Luo, Sophia Luo, Jonathan Ma, Sadhika Malladi, Natasha Mayor, Shivali Minocha, Anika Mohindra, Aishwarya Murari, Emily Pan, Kristen Park, Sohil Patel, Divya Periyakoil, Karen Qi, Sanil Rajput, Nikita Ramoji, Elisabeth Siegel, Natalie Simonian, Gurutam Thockchom, Karen Tu, Anish Velagapudi, Allison Wang, Esther Wang, Alice Wu, Daphne Yang, Richard Yi, Michael Zhao and Jessica Zhu.
Last weekend, 29 schools from five states visited the upper school campus to participate in the Nichols Debate Tournament. Harker students did not compete, but helped organize and run the tournament. Upper school debate students held a special workshop for novice debaters, who participated in a tournament of their own.