The classes of 2011 and 2012 each took a day off in September for a special trip that emphasized the importance of working together to accomplish goals and meet challenges. The first trip on Sept. 14 took two groups of sophomores on an adventure to ropes courses in Santa Cruz and La Honda, where they conquered a series of obstacles and in the process learned how to utilize teamwork and rely on one another.
The following Monday, separate groups of juniors ventured out into the water on trips of their own, going kayaking at Elkhorn Slough and Monterey Bay, and sailing in Santa Cruz. In addition to the valuable lessons learned about trust and teamwork, the trips allowed the students to get closer to nature and appreciate the beauty of the California outdoors.
Congratulations to juniors Olivia Zhu and Josephine Chen, who both took honors in the 2009 Anthem Essay Contest, administered by the Ayn Rand Institute. Zhu was one of the third place finishers in the competition and was awarded a cash prize of $200. Chen was a semifinalist and earned $30.
The annual contest requires students to write an essay on a topic regarding Ayn Rand’s novelette “Anthem,” first published in 1938.
MSN.com Sept. 23: An Alexander Wang ’88 creation was listed in “The Wearable” section of the slide show, “New Styles for Spring: New York Fashion Week Previews 2010.” The garment featured was an off-the-shoulder dress with a draped neckline.
Mercury News, Sept. 17: Namrata Anand, Gr. 12 and her mother, middle school teacher Nina Anand, were mentioned in this article as taking classes in traditional southern Indian melodies.
Mercury News, Sept 16: Boys Highlight Reel mentioned Cole Davis, Gr.12, as making 19 tackles and returning a fumble for a touchdown in the Eagles’ win over San Jose Academy. Read the full articles in Harker News [Online] and in the Mercury News.
Mercury News, Sept 16: Alumna and member of Harker’s 2007 championship volleyball team Candace Silva-Martin ’09 was noted for being named Atlantic 10 Conference’s Co-Defensive Player of the Week and Rookie of the Week. Read the full articles in Harker News [Online] and in the Mercury News.
New York Times, Sept. 14: Designer and Harker alumnus Alexander Wang ’88 had a photo and mention in the Fashion Review.
New York Times, Sept. 9: Middle school alumnus Wajahat Ali ’94 has written a play being produced in New York that was reviewed by the Times.
San Jose Business Journal, Sept 4: Harker is listed as the number one school in Silicon Valley as ranked by enrollment.
Mercury News, Aug. 19: Under Honors and Accolades, Ramya Rangan, Gr. 10, was noted as having won a bronze medal at the China Girls Mathematical Olympiad.
Shreya Indukuri and Daniela Lapidous, both Gr. 10, are two of 25 climate youth leaders selected to attend the Governor’s Global Climate Summit co-hosted by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sept. 30-Oct. 2.
Alexis Ringwald, co-founder of Valence Energy, will introduce Lapidous and Indukuri and their project on smart meters and energy software that reduce energy consumption. Ringwald co-founded her company with Raju Indukuri, Shreya’s father, and two others, and has been mentoring the girls as they developed their project.
Governors from a number of states will attend, as will the administrator of the EPA and other high-ranking government officials. Governors from Indonesia, Brazil, Nigeria and the heads of the United Nations Development Programme and other organizations will be in the audience.
At the event, keynote speeches will be delivered by Tony Blair, Thomas Friedman and Dr. Rajendra K. Pachauri, chair of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Harker has been invited to send a representative to the event.
“This is an incredible opportunity for Shreya and Daniela,” said Ringwald. “They are being recognized for their leadership on the climate issue in deploying these smart energy solutions in their school.”
Shreya Indukuri and Daniela Lapidous, both Gr. 10, are two of 25 climate youth leaders selected to attend the Governor’s Global Climate Summit co-hosted by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sept. 30-Oct. 2.
Alexis Ringwald, co-founder of Valence Energy, will introduce Lapidous and Indukuri and their project on smart meters and energy software that reduce energy consumption. Ringwald co-founded her company with Raju Indukuri, Shreya’s father, and two others, and has been mentoring the girls as they developed their project.
Governors from a number of states will attend, as will the administrator of the EPA and other high-ranking government officials. Governors from Indonesia, Brazil, Nigeria and the heads of the United Nations Development Programme and other organizations will be in the audience.
At the event, keynote speeches will be delivered by Tony Blair, Thomas Friedman and Dr. Rajendra K. Pachauri, chair of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Harker has been invited to send a representative to the event.
“This is an incredible opportunity for Shreya and Daniela,” said Ringwald. “They are being recognized for their leadership on the climate issue in deploying these smart energy solutions in their school.”
Shreya Indukuri and Daniela Lapidous, both Gr. 10, are two of 25 climate youth leaders selected to attend the Governor’s Global Climate Summit co-hosted by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sept. 30-Oct. 2.
Alexis Ringwald, co-founder of Valence Energy, will introduce Lapidous and Indukuri and their project on smart meters and energy software that reduce energy consumption. Ringwald co-founded her company with Raju Indukuri, Shreya’s father, and two others, and has been mentoring the girls as they developed their project.
Governors from a number of states will attend, as will the administrator of the EPA and other high-ranking government officials. Governors from Indonesia, Brazil, Nigeria and the heads of the United Nations Development Programme and other organizations will be in the audience.
At the event, keynote speeches will be delivered by Tony Blair, Thomas Friedman and Dr. Rajendra K. Pachauri, chair of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Harker has been invited to send a representative to the event.
“This is an incredible opportunity for Shreya and Daniela,” said Ringwald. “They are being recognized for their leadership on the climate issue in deploying these smart energy solutions in their school.”
On Sept. 16, Chris Nikoloff, head of school, and Evan Barth, dean of studies, invited students to discuss academic integrity face-to-face during lunch hour in the Saratoga quad. At the previous day’s assembly, Nikoloff encouraged students to drop in to ask questions and share their concerns on the topic, which was also addressed during the matriculation ceremony at the beginning of the year.
Alumna Shabnam Aggarwal ’03 paid a special visit on Sept. 15 to The Harker Upper School to chat with students about life after high school. Aggarwal attended Carnegie Mellon University and spent a summer in India as an intern for Microsoft. She went to work for Merrill Lynch after finishing college, then left for Cambodia to work for a self-sustaining non-governmental organization (NGO) that provides training in data entry and English language skills to disadvantaged and disabled Cambodians.
Aggarwal is preparing to begin the next stage of her career in India, where she will work on a project developing applications for lower-end mobile phones that will be used to teach English to Indians without access to important educational resources.
“It was really exciting to hear about how much they supported what I’m doing,” Aggarwal said of Harker’s interest in her recent activities. Her main goal was to communicate to students the merits of wandering off the beaten path. “Mostly what I’d really like to accomplish is just making it apparent that not following the cookie-cutter life is not the end of the world.”
After receiving her engineering degree and working with Merrill Lynch in New York, Aggarwal chose to put her expertise to humanitarian ends. “Even after I did the engineering degree I said, ‘Well, I like engineering, I’m good at it, but … I don’t want to be sitting behind a computer in Silicon Valley for the rest of my life,’” she recalled. “I really knew I wanted to go to India. I knew I wanted to be in the developing world.”
She said the idea dawned on her while training for a marathon. “You put things in perspective and you say, ‘Wait, let’s back up. Let’s look at the bigger picture. I really can do what I put my mind to, and I could accomplish something that I really cared about.’”
Aggarwal believes that people who choose to acquire engineering or other scientific degrees can still use their skills to have a positive impact on impoverished areas. “I think Harker students definitely think about the future a lot, and I’d be interested to see who’s interested in that profession in the NGO world, or even engineering, or how you can use your technology world to make a difference,” she said. “When you’re young you have that passion for it and you’re idealistic enough to think that it’s possible that we can change the world.”
The National Merit Scholarship Program (NMSP),a nonprofit organization that honors the scholastic achievements of high school juniors, has announced the nation’s semifinalists in the 2010 competition from those students who took the PSAT in 2008.
More than 1.5 million juniors in nearly 22,000 U.S. high schools took the PSAT; semifinalists represent less than one percent of those who took the exam. Most high schools boast only a few, if any, students who earn this prestigious recognition. Congratulations to Harker’s 50 semifinalists (29 percent of the class), now seniors:
Namrata Anand, Brandon Araki, Patrick Campbell, Victor Chen, Virginia Chen, Jeanette Chin, Da-Yoon Chung, Alexander Creasman, Samir Datta, Stefan Eckhardt, Nathaniel Edwards, Thomas Enzminger, Ryan Fan, Andy Fang, James Feng, Alex Fotland, Michael Gendotti, Alex Han, Kelsey Hilbrich, Christine Hsu, Eugene Huang, Sonya Huang, Noriko Ishisoko, Vishesh Jain, Carissa Jansen, Curran Kaushik, Sohini Khan, Yash Khandwala, Tiffany Kyi, Ruozi Li, Daisy Lin, Andrea Lincoln, Connie Lu, Rachel Luo, Christina Ma, Anjali Menon, Arjun Mody, Arthi Padmanabhan, Adam Perelman, Govind Raghunath, Mark Roh, Srikrishna Seeni, Rashmi Sharma, Haran Sivakumar, Elaine Song, Jeffrey Tan, Sarah Teplitsky, Margaret Woods, Kevin Zhang, Andrew Zhou
Most of these semifinalists who continue their academic excellence into their senior year, and who are endorsed by their principals and earn high scores on their SATs, will advance to the finalist round, where they have opportunities to win one of three types of merit scholarships: $2,500 National Merit-sponsored scholarships awarded by state, approximately 1,000 scholarships sponsored by corporations and business organizations, and some 4,700 scholarships awarded by about 200 colleges and universities to students matriculating at those schools.
Five representatives from Singapore’s Ministry of Education and two representatives from the National University of Singapore came to The Harker Upper School on Sept. 15 to learn more about Harker’s computer science curriculum.
The visitors hope to generate interest in computer science programs in Singapore’s students, and wanted to learn how high schools in the United States were implementing computer science programs. They were led to Harker due to its recognition by the College Board as having one of the top computer science curricula in its size range (300-799 students) and by its development of University of California-approved courses. Their trip also included visits to Stanford, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Carnegie Mellon.
The day began with a meeting between Barnabas Tan, curriculum planning officer for the Singapore Ministry of Education, and Eric Nelson, computer science department chair. During the meeting, Nelson shared and discussed information about the various aspects of the program.
Following the discussion, they headed to Nichols Hall to observe Susan King’s AP Computer Science class, in order gain a better understanding of what goes on in the classroom from day to day. They then received a tour of the Saratoga campus’ facilities courtesy of Jennifer Gargano, assistant head of school for academic affairs.
The group then headed back to Nichols Hall to observe a programming class taught by Richard Page, who then accompanied Tan to lunch, which they enjoyed with the rest of Harker’s computer science faculty.
The representatives mentioned that they were impressed with the caliber of Harker’s programs and with the many interdisciplinary connections within its computer science curriculum. “They expressed interest in our focus on algorithmic thinking, a common theme they found among their university visits,” Gargano said.