Six Harker seniors have been named top 300 scholars in the 2022 Regeneron Science Talent Search, the most for any California school. Alice Feng, Alex Hu, Rishab Parthasarathy, Sasvath Ramachandran, Aimee Wang and Emily Zhou were among 300 high school seniors selected from 1,804 entries received in this year’s competition. Each submitted original research projects that were the result of months of work.
“In a year where our students, as juniors, had few opportunities to conduct research, they persevered, letting their curiosity and dedication overcome all the challenges of our uncertain times,” said Anita Chetty, science department chair.
Each of the scholars will receive a cash award of $2,000, and each school with a student scholar will be awarded $2,000 to fund STEM programs. On Jan. 20, 40 of the top 300 scholars will be named finalists, who will then participate in the final stage of the competition, which takes place March 10-16.
At 12-0, the girls basketball team’s hot streak continues. Over the winter break, they recorded wins against Menlo-Atherton and Lynbrook, followed by a 3-0 run at the North Tournament in Los Angeles. They stand in the top spot in CCS Division 4 and will face Notre Dame-San Jose on Jan. 11.
Boys basketball also went on an impressive 3-1 run over winter break, defeating Del Mar, Andrew Hill and Gunderson and qualifying for CCS. They are in league play this week, facing Crystal Springs at home on Thursday and traveling to Eastside College Prep on Saturday.
Girls and boys soccer were both successful in their respective matches on Dec. 17. The girls won 5-0 over Cupertino and now boast a 6-0 record, while the boys beat Saratoga High 4-0 and are also undefeated at 5-0-1. Be sure to catch the Kicks Against Cancer games this Friday, and help raise funds for Camp Okizu this week, as the soccer teams will be selling T-shirts, baked goods and more during lunch!
Harker upper school singers were recently named to three honor choirs. Seniors Teresa Cai and Anya Warrier, juniors Alan Jiang and Aniket Singh, and sophomores Anya Chauhan and Miki Mitarai will represent Harker in the National Association for Music Education’s (NAfME) National Honor Choir. They will perform in a virtual concert to be held Jan. 22-24.
Mitarai, Jiang and junior Aria Jain also will be members of the American Choral Directors Association Western division’s honor choir, which is slated to perform in Long Beach in March, at the ACDA Western region’s regional conference.
The California All-State Choir, selected by the California Choral Directors Association, will feature Cai, Jain, Jiang, Mitarai and Singh, as well as juniors Ava Arasan, Kris Estrada and Anika Pandey, sophomores Shayla He and Katelyn Hsu, and Varun Bhupathi, grade 9. According upper school music teacher Susan Nace, Harker has a higher percentage of students participating in the All-State Choir than any high school, and the highest rate of acceptance among independent schools.
“The directors of all the honor choirs are highly respected composers and conductors from throughout the United States,” Nace said. “Although we require our Certificate Candidates to audition every year, any of our choral musicians may audition. The audition is rigorous and includes sight-reading, vocal technique evaluations, and vocal quality evaluations.”
Nace added that Harker’s rate of acceptance this year was the school’s highest yet.
Varsity girls soccer is off to a very strong start, boasting a 3-0 record after their latest win against Del Mar. The team also has yet to allow a single goal. Their schedule this week sees them taking on Pacific Collegiate School on Wednesday and Terra Nova on Thursday, both at home.
After opening their season with a 3-0 win over Del Mar last Wednesday, varsity boys soccer played to a 2-2 tie against a tough North Salinas on Friday. They are at home against Santa Clara today and will head to Andrew Hill on Thursday before returning home to play Santa Cruz on Friday.
Girls varsity basketball is currently 4-0 – defeating Sobrato, Lincoln, San Jose and Overfelt – heading into tomorrow’s home game against King’s Academy.
Boys varsity basketball, meanwhile, bounced back from their season opening loss to Monta Vista and are now at 2-1 after last week’s wins over University Prep and BASIS. They are competing this week in the Lynbrook Winter Classic tournament.
Last month, Harker’s DECA chapter hosted its first fall conference, during which 50 grade 9 DECA members from the Silicon Valley district prepared for the upcoming DECA competitive season.
Attendees enjoyed a light breakfast before activities began in Nichols Hall. Following some introductory presentations and icebreaker activities, the students took part in a testing exercise modeled after tests given at DECA conferences. “I was excited that a lot of our first-year members got to experience this before their first competitive conference,” said junior Anika Muddu, Harker DECA’s vice president of competitions.
After lunch, students learned about DECA roleplay tournaments and developed responses to a prompt about ethics in the hotel industry. After presenting their responses to volunteer judges, the students received feedback on how to improve. “The roleplay tournament was a great first introduction to what the roleplay experience would be in a real conference. It’s definitely a different feeling when you know that you want to do well and place,” said Gabe Li, grade 9.
Later, the students had the opportunity to take part in workshops on a variety of topics. Stanford lecturer Matt Abrahams hosted a workshop on persuasive speaking, while entrepreneur and angel investor Suneela Muddu presented on how to pitch a business. Other workshops included “Investing 101” by Cisco engineer Yuri Mitnick and “Social Media Marketing,” delivered by Chegg social media manager Daisy Zhang.
During the closing ceremony, awards for the day’s competitions were doled out. Awardees were as follows:
Testing:
First Place: Cindy Yu
Second Place: Emily Mitnick, Gia Emelie, Gary Jin
Third Place: Shiven Balaji, Valerie Li, Ruhan Sahasi
Roleplay Tournament:
First Place: Sam Parupudi
Second Place: Tiana Salvi
Third Place: Saahira Dayal
Top 10 (Listed Alphabetically): Maya Affaki, Saahira Dayal, Ariana Gauba, Gabe Li, Valerie Li, Lauren Lin, Sam Parupudi, Tiana Salvi, Shaila Tandon, Caleb Tang
Last week, girls soccer won their season opener against Monta Vista with a score of 5-0. They’re headed to Andrew Hill on Tuesday and will return to Harker on Thursday against Del Mar.
Girls basketball won 44-31 over Sobrato on Tuesday in their home opener. Their schedule this week sees them facing Lincoln on Tuesday, Overfelt on Thursday and San Jose High on Saturday, all at home.
After last week’s loss to Monta Vista, boys basketball looks to bounce back on Tuesday against University Prep before heading to BASIS on Friday.
Boys water polo’s historic season ended the weekend before Thanksgiving break with a 13-7 loss to Gunn High. Their CIF Northern California Championship run included wins over Dixon and Ponderosa. Congratulations to the team on a fantastic season.
More than 200 members of the Harker community headed to the upper school’s Rothschild Performing Arts Center on Nov. 20 for this year’s TEDxHarker School, organized each year by students in Harker’s business and entrepreneurship program.
The impressive lineup of speakers assembled for this year’s event included chef, author and restaurateur Alice Waters, who appeared via Zoom to speak on school-supported agriculture and its effects on climate change and social inequality. She also advocated for the procurement of school foods directly from farmers, and touched on her work with the Edible Schoolyard Project and the Alice Waters Institute for Edible Education, which has partnered with the University of California.
Author Dan Roam spoke on the power of visual storytelling, as detailed in his book, “The Back of the Napkin: How Visual Storytelling Works.” Roam, who has worked with leadership at companies such as Google, Microsoft and Boeing, presented on how simple illustrations can help leaders make sense of complex situations.
Hetal Vasavada, a contestant on the sixth season of the competitive cooking show MasterChef, talked about how she pursued a career outside of the STEM fields pursued by many Indian-Americans. Originally on the path to a career in the sciences, Vasavada discussed her pivot to the food industry and how she convinced her family (as well as herself) that it was the right choice.
This year’s TEDxHarker School student speaker was senior Aaron Tran, whose passions include bioinformatics and scientific ethics and philosophy. Spurred by the worrying amount of misinformation that arose during the COVID-19 pandemic, Tran talked about solutions to the concerning lack of information literacy and the growing mistrust people have of one another.
In addition to the speakers, attendees also enjoyed perusing the exhibitor area, where they played with robotic toys made by Petoi, tried out slime samples from Dots N Stripes and got an up-close look at the Vinci electric bike.
At lunch, students had the chance to sit down with local business mentors to ask questions and receive advice.
Videos of this year’s TEDxHarker speakers are expected to be uploaded to the TEDx YouTube channel in the coming months.
On Saturday, the girls tennis team defeated Menlo for the fourth time this season to become the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) Northern California champion for the first time in the program’s history, capping off a massively successful run that also saw the team earn its region’s second consecutive CCS championship.
Displaying dominance for the entire season, the team went undefeated in league play and allowed just 7 points in 10 games. The girls also met division rival Menlo four times, winning every contest, and took second place at the Point Loma Invitational in San Diego, where they defeated CIF Southern California champions Westlake.
As an additional feather in the program’s cap, the duo of Rachel Hernandez, grade 10, and Olivia Guo, grade 9, reached the semifinals of the CCS doubles tournament and Audrey Feng, grade 9, won the individual league title.
Boys varsity water polo made history this past weekend with the program’s first-ever CCS championship, defeating Archbishop Mitty 9-5. Girls tennis also had a landmark moment, defeating Menlo to become CCS champions for the second consecutive year. With these wins, Harker has a total of 10 CCS championships across all participating sports. Both teams also advanced to their respective CIF Northern California championships. Boys water polo will face Dixon High at the Singh Aquatic Center at 5 p.m. on Tuesday, while girls tennis heads to Sacramento this Friday and Saturday as the top seed for their matches.
Tennis players also will be in CCS competition this week as Audrey Feng, grade 9, participates in singles, and the duo of Rachel Hernandez, grade 10, and Olivia Guo, grade 9, compete in doubles.
Cross country runners Veyd Patil, grade 10, and juniors Rupert Chen, Rigo Gonzales and Kara Kister finished their seasons at Saturday’s CCS championships, with all running well. Patil, Chen and Gonzales placed 31st, 35th and 48th, respectively, out of 93 runners.
Last week, CareerConnect, Harker’s student-run networking and career preparation program, led a leadership workshop featuring Helen Zhu ’21, who discussed journalism leadership and clubs at Harker, and Avi Gulati ‘20, who talked about the student council and volunteering in high school. Both alumni shared their experiences in finding their passions in high school, experiencing new classes and clubs, and being involved in student leadership.
Claire Cheng, a freshman who attended the session said, “I think that the event was very interesting, because I learned how two successful Harker students were able to navigate their way through high school and obtain leadership positions even in college.”
The workshop was intended to help guide grade 9 students to explore new opportunities, electives and extracurriculars before they settle. Organizers strove to make the experience memorable for the freshmen and sophomores who attended, but also the alumni speakers. “Even though I was halfway across the country from the upper school campus, it was really heartwarming to be able to see the freshman and sophomores in the classrooms through the Zoom screen,” Zhu said. “I was so glad to be able to give back to the Harker community and I really hope the attendees learned something new!”
On Oct. 27, CareerConnect brought nine students on a day trip to Constellation Research’s three-day Connected Enterprise business conference, held at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Half Moon Bay, to help them better understand what is currently happening in the business world as well as what is predicted to happen in the future. The participants heard from many highly qualified speakers, many of whom are executives in Fortune 500 companies including Amazon and Salesforce. The students learned about the applications of technology and business models in various industries.
One of the notable speakers was Colin Bryer, a former executive at Amazon as well as the author of “Working Backwards,” which provides an inside perspective on the methodology and culture of Amazon. He discussed his experiences working closely with Jeff Bezos and how businesses like Amazon plan for the long term. Another was Geeta Nayyar, the executive medical director at Salesforce, who described the technological changes in the medical industry as a result of COVID-19.
Overall, the trip was a success and provided inspiration for students interested in business. When asked what he wanted the students to gain from Connected Enterprise, R “Ray” Wang, Constellation’s founder and CEO, explained that he wished for all the students to “see what trends are happening and meet people.” He further elaborated that everyone at the conference was approachable and happy to give advice to the students. Sophomore Claire Miao, reflecting on the benefits of the event, commented, “I thought it was a great experience to meet industry professionals that are at the top of their industry. All of the talks were great, and everyone had a topic to listen to that they were interested in. I also had so much fun at the hotel to see the views.”
The trip proved to be a valuable experience for the attendees, with the nine Harker students networking with new people and gaining a more comprehensive understanding of how the business world works.