Congratulations to senior Meilan Steimle, who has been named a 2017 Presidential Scholar of the Arts! As one of just 161 scholars nationwide, she is now eligible to attend an expense-paid trip to Washington, D.C. in June, where this year’s scholars will be honored. Scholars who attend this event will have the chance to meet with leading educators, scientists and authors, as well make new friends among their peers.
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April 21, 2017:
Earlier this week, seniors Manan Shah and Meilan Steimle were named semifinalists in the 2017 U.S. Presidential Scholars Program. Their applications will be reviewed by the Commission on Presidential Scholars to determine this year’s Presidential Scholars.
Congratulations and good luck!
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Last month, the U.S. Department of Education announced this year’s candidates for the U.S. Presidential Scholars Program, and 19 Harker seniors were among them. Mission San Jose topped the local charts with 31. As many as 161 of the more than 5,000 candidates will be chosen as scholars.
The Presidential Scholars Program, launched in 1964, recognizes high school seniors of distinguished achievement in a variety of disciplines. It is recognized as one of the highest honors awarded to high school students.
Harker’s Presidential Scholar candidates for 2017 are:
Kai-Siang Ang
Steven Cao
Aditya Dhar
Davis Dunaway
Ria Gandhi
Andrew Gu
Zhuoying Huang
Lauren Liu
Sanjana Marce
Sandip Nirmel
Evani Radiya-Dixit
Divya Rajasekharan
Andrew Rule
Venkat Sankar
Manan Shah
Meilan Steimle
Arjun Subramaniam
Andrew Tierno
Michael Tseitlin
Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Harker has the highest number of candidates from a school in California. Mission San Jose High School has 31 presidential scholar candidates, making it the California school with the most candidates. We apologize for the error.
The first basketball hoops are in place in the new athletic center as final assembly has begun. “Our wood guy will be out next week to check flatness of the floor and do a moisture test on the concrete,” said Matt McKinley, senior project engineer for Devcon. From the ground up, a gym is emerging.
A vapor barrier will be installed between the concrete and the wood floor, but the concrete must first cure sufficiently so that the wood won’t be affected. Harker has opted to install a floor that will take a heavier load than normal so it can keep a power lift in the gym to service lights and the athletic equipment if necessary, McKinley noted.
First things first: final sealing of the building is underway. The “leave-out bay,” the huge opening in the south wall used to bring in big fixtures and take out heavy construction equipment, has already been framed over. “We are closing that out so we can get the whole exterior tuned up and done,” said McKinley. Devcon will leave one of the four lifts still in use for Harker and remove the remaining lifts using a temporary overhead crane, an interesting feat of engineering.
The entire gym has been drywalled, and drywall is going up in all the offices on the gym level, as well as the training and locker rooms on both levels. Tectum acoustic panels are stacked and awaiting installation on the gym walls (for more on how the athletic center interior components are tailored to function throughout, see Harker News). The large images of athletes that will adorn the south wall have been chosen and are in production.
Moving up the walls, the east viewing area, located off of the second floor workout room near the performing arts center, is framed in and ready to be finished. It will protrude a bit from the wall, making the whole gym visible. The north viewing area, nearest the administration building, is also ready to be completed. This platform will be reserved for those in wheelchairs or otherwise needing easy access, with the elevator nearby to allow access to the gym floor level. This viewing area will have some nice features, with wood ceiling panels. “It is basically an acoustical ceiling,” said McKinley. “It does have acoustical values for limiting sound transfer.”
The north viewing area also will feature “maple panels on the facades,” McKinley said, pointing to the vertical surfaces, “here and on the returns,” around the sides. The rough angle-iron and steel cable rails now keeping workers safe will be replaced by stainless steel rails with glass guard rails.
Continuing on up, the basketball hoops are just the first of the fixtures going on the ceiling. Nets and other equipment also will rise for storage near the ceiling after use, and there will be a dividing curtain to split the gym for multiple uses. That work is taking place the first week of May.
The following week, the electric curtains for the long banks of windows will be installed, said McKinley. All wiring for the athletic equipment, curtain and shades is in, ready to be hooked up. The control panels for all the equipment will be located near the coaches’ offices.
Finally, way up at the top, off to the sides along the walls, will be the ventilation ducts. The huge tube sections, 3 feet in diameter and 20 feet long, lay about the gym floor, having been painted earlier in the week. The straps that will hold the ducts in place already hang from the ceiling. It’s fun to think these great tubes will hang, unnoticed for the most part, along the walls for many years, as they quietly add to the ambiance created by the activity and shouts of athletes and the cheers of spectators in the new athletic center.
Each year, a small number of students apply for and are selected to receive research grants from two endowments, the John Near Excellence in History Education Endowment Fund, established in 2009, and the Mitra Family Endowment for the Humanities, established in 2011. The endowments provide funding each year for eight or nine seniors to pursue topics of their choice in depth. To date, 28 Near scholars and 19 Mitra scholars have completed papers on subjects ranging from a study of the Gettysburg campaign during the Civil War (2011) to the influence of punk music on the overthrow of the Soviet regime in Poland (2017), with many interesting titles in between.
The scholars, along with their mentors and parents, gather each spring at a reception on campus to celebrate the end of the long, sometimes trying, but always enlightening, journey. The student papers are a collaborative effort driven by the student, with the help of one or two history department mentors and an upper school librarian mentor. The mentors help students negotiate the highways and byways of in-depth research and compile the research into a coherent paper. At the reception, each scholar says a few words about their effort and then a mentor speaks to the journey he or she helped facilitate. What emerges is that the learning is great and the bonds of scholarship are strong.
“Tonight, we celebrate passion, persistence and partnership,” said Donna Gilbert, history department chair, as she opened the reception in late April. The mentors were there to “correct, guide and confront, not just cheerlead,” she said. Mentors questioned researchers’ presumptions, advised them to change direction, rewrite, reexamine, reorganize and narrow their focus, she added.
Susan Smith, Harker library director, noted this year’s scholars used 315 sources, appended 896 end notes and wrote 380 pages in their researches. “We celebrate the hundreds of hours of research that led you to scholarly analysis of literature, oral histories, journals, maps, images, technical papers and interviews. We celebrate all that you learned in the process of thinking deeply,” she said.
“We celebrate the bumps in the road that caused you to question, rethink, organize and question, again. That’s how you build new knowledge. Mostly, we celebrate your love of learning. There is no trophy to win or prize to take home, except what you learned along the way,” Smith finished.
Each scholar spoke for several minutes, touching on how deeply grateful they are for the support of their parents in the grueling effort to produce a great paper, as well as for the foundation of support from their library and history department mentors.
All scholars had poignant memories of how mentors and parents helped them through rough spots. All papers are listed below.
“Honestly, you have given me, and all of us, the chance to explore interests that I don’t think many of us knew we even had,” said Aditya Dhar. “The Near/Mitra program offers us unparalleled opportunities to learn more, not only about the rich history of different issues, but also about the broader research process.”
Dhar’s history department mentor, Katy Rees, noted “The real value of the Near/Mitra program is it can give students the opportunity to engage in authentic and independent research at a level that is impossible in the classroom.”
Andrew Rule found a true home in the research program. “I believe deeply in reading and in storytelling. I kind of would like to say I’m going to devote my entire life to storytelling, but in some ways, I’ve already started,” he said. “The idea is that myth is cyclical, that its ending is another beginning, and the ending of this paper is another beginning for me. I have a long, long way to go with Native American literature before I’m done, so thank you for this beginning.”
Rule’s history department mentor, Mark Janda, noted Rule “argues for the validity and the beauty of oral traditions [and] illustrates in his research the growing endless joy derived from literature when we understand the historical context that informs the writer or the speaker of that literature.”
Each scholar and mentor who spoke added to the sense that true scholarship had resulted from the efforts of the students. Each expressed passion for his or her topic and recognized the valuable skills he or she had gained in researching and writing the paper.
Soham Khan spoke for all the scholars when he said, “I’d like to acknowledge the Near/Mitra Endowments for empowering us to conduct high level research in the humanities. After all, the purpose of genuine scholastic inquiry is to examine the complexity of human experience, and I’m so grateful to have been offered this opportunity to explore my passion in a supportive space that affirmed my aspirations.”
The 2017-18 Near Scholars, all seniors, next year, will be Amy Jin, Matthew Lee, Andrew Semenza, Isabella Spradlin and Derek Yen. Mitra grant scholars are Nirban Bhatia, Emily Chen, Jacqueline He, Alan Jiang and Serena Lu. Best of luck to all these scholars as they begin their journey!
Joe Rosenthal, executive director of advancement, closed the event noting not only the hard work and wonderful scholarship on display, but the tremendous poise scholars displayed in presenting their papers. “Many years ago, when we talked with John Near about this concept,” said Rosenthal, “he really had a vision to continue to help the school in a way where students can really study and be very serious about researching topics that are of interest to them in the area of history, and the Mitra endowment followed that lead.”
“The idea was not only to help the students, but also to have deep involvement from the faculty. Sue [Smith] and Donna [Gilbert] have put together a program that is really, absolutely, what John had in mind when he conceived of this program. He would be very, very proud of what we are doing now, that’s for sure.”
Arnav Tandon: “Cross-Cultural Camaraderie: Tracing the Roots of Cicero’s Philosophy on Friendship to Aristotelian Ideas”
Maya Valluru: “Listen, This One’s for You: The Influence of Punk Music in the 1989 Overthrow of the Soviet Communist Regime in Poland”
Raymond Xu: “Saving Health Aid from Death’s Door: Analyzing Fraud in the The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria Through the Principle-Agent Problem in Nigeria”
Tiffany Zhu: “Putting the Realism in Socialist Realism: Gorky’s ‘Mother’ as a Bridge between Soviet and Chernyshevskian Aesthetics”
Near Endowment Papers
Aditya Dhar: “Constitutional Conundrums and Measuring Minimalism: Analyzing the Incorporation of Restraint and Avoidance Canons in the Roberts Court’s Decision in Citizens United v. FEC”
Soham Khan: “Truth is a Pathless Land: Examining the Influence of Theosophy on Jiddu Krishnamurti’s Philosophy”
Sarisha Kurup: “Art in the Era of AIDS: A Look at the Emergence of ‘AIDS Art’ in 1980s and 90s New York City as a Result of AIDS Activism”
Andrew Rule: “Sunrise, Sunrise: Repurposing the Native American Oral Tradition in the Literature of the Activist 1970s”
Molly Wancewicz: “Crossing the Line: Angelina Grimké’s and Sojourner Truth’s Motivations as Representative of the Interaction Between the Women’s Suffrage and Abolition Movements”
Read more about the Near and Mitra Endowments at Harker News
As part of the Principles of Business & Entrepreneurship class, students recently attended the Saratoga State of the City address, where they met Mayor Emily Lo and U.S. Rep. Anna Eshoo, a democrat representing California. Following awards to police officers and firefighters, Sahil Jain, grade 9, noted, “It was really inspiring to hear all of the accomplishments [of] the award winners … and also how they were beneficial to the community. The advice that Congresswoman Eshoo gave me was this: Writing is the single most important thing in life. If you can master writing, you do anything in America.”
Brian Wang, grade 9, also attended. “I learned about the importance of community involvement in new projects and the significance of writing,” he noted. “Mayor Emily Lo discussed a variety of projects that the community worked on, and in many of the cases, the project’s success relied upon community members who were dedicated to making the community better, such as an elderly man who received the Citizen of the Year award for cleaning up trash in the community and planting more trees. In addition, Congresswoman Eshoo educated me on how writing would be incredibly essential later in my life, as there would come a time when I need to explain who I am and what I can do both concisely and effectively.”
In late April, the Harker Conservatory presented the stage version of the hit Disney film “High School Musical,” directed by Laura Lang-Ree, in which the students of Albuquerque, N.M.’s East High School vie for parts in an upcoming production of “Romeo and Juliet.” Star athlete Troy (Kayvon Solaimanpour) and shy new girl Gabriella (Chetana Kalidindi) unexpectedly become the top candidates for the coveted lead roles, which threatens to undo the social order of East High.
Complex and energetic musical numbers, courtesy of musical director Catherine Snider and choreographer Katie Champlin, dazzled the audience, and set designer Paul Vallerga’s understated rendering of East High School allowed for a variety of settings, providing the cast with ample play room. The student crew, headed up by stage manager and Harker alum Michael Prutton ’11, kept things flowing behind the scenes to ensure a smooth production.
Harker’s speech and debate team has had a great run at this spring’s championship tournaments. Harker students, including some middle schoolers, have placed at championships in all five events: Lincoln-Douglas, policy, congressional and public forum debate, as well as individual speech events.
Our younger debaters had a great showing at the Western JV and Novice National Championship, held at San Francisco State University in March. Jai Bahri, grade 9, and Deven Shah, grade 7, were semifinalists in JV policy.
In JV Lincoln-Douglas, Kelly Shen, grade 10, also made it to semifinals. Joining her were Sachin Shah, grade 9, in quarterfinals, and Annie Ma, grade 9, and Alycia Cary, grade 10, in octofinals. In JV public forum, the duo of Kashov Sharma, grade 9, and Raymond Banke, grade 10, made it to the octofinals, as did partners Aimee Wang and Sascha Pakravan, both grade 7. Elen Guo and Phil Han, both grade 9, made it to octofinals in novice public forum.
Harker also had an outstanding showing in speaker awards at the championship. The first place speaker in JV Lincoln-Douglas debate was Sachin Shah. Also placing in JV Lincoln-Douglas were Shen in sixth place, Ma in 12th place, Cary in 13th place and Arely Sun, grade 7, in 20th place.
In JV policy, Deven Shah took second place, and his partner, Bahri took 10th. In JV public forum, Datha Arramreddy, grade 9, took sixth, Banke was ninth, Amanda Cheung, grade 9, was 13th and Wang was 15th. In novice public forum, Guo took sixth.
The season continued with the National Debate Coaches Association Championship. That event was held at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah, in April. Srivatsav Pyda, grade 12, made it to quarterfinals in Lincoln-Douglas, while Serena Lu, grade 11, and Emmie Malyugina, grade 12, were octofinalists. Also representing Harker at the tournament were the policy duo of Molly Wancewicz, grade 12, and Anusha Kuppahally, grade 11. In Lincoln-Douglas, Sachin Shah, Quentin Clark, grade 9, Lauren Fu, grade 9, and Ma also contributed to the strong team performance. Malyugina was also the 10th speaker.
Nikhil Dharmaraj, grade 10, qualified to compete at the state championship in original oratory and advanced to the semifinals. The tournament was held at Arcadia High School at the end of April.
Rounding out the spring series was the Tournament of Championships, held the last weekend of April at the University of Kentucky in Lexington. This is one of the most difficult tournaments to qualify for and Harker is extremely proud of Pyda and Malyugina for representing us in Lincoln-Douglas. Avi Gulati, grade 9, and Jason Huang, grade 10, also qualified in congressional debate. Pyda ended his season with a quarterfinal finish at the event.
Looking ahead, we will be excited to cheer for Aditya Dhar, grade 12, as he performs at the World Schools Debate Championships in Bali, Indonesia, in August. He was one of only five American students chosen to compete at this elite event. At the National Individual Events Tournament of Champions in May, Nikki Solanki, grade 9, will compete in dramatic interpretation, and Gulati and Dharmaraj will compete in original oratory. Also, in June, the National Speech & Debate Association Championship will be hosted in Birmingham, Ala., and Harker will be represented by Huang in World Schools Debate, and Galati and Dharmaraj in original oratory. We are excited to report further as these events take place.
Some lower school students had a stellar weekend of competition at the 2017 Tech Challenge, with teams of Harker students taking the top two spots in their grade bracket and a third team with three of four members from Harker winning an award for design process. Fifth graders Reza Jalil, Vardaan Ghai, Veyd Patil and Kyle Leung – known collectively as Team Trespassers – took the first place spot, while Team Arctic Infusion – made up of fifth graders Om Tandon, Jordan Labio, Zachary Blue and Neel Handa – finished second.
Team Huskies – comprising fifth graders Nathan Liu, Adrian Liu and Natasha Rajaram and a fourth member from another school – won an award for Outstanding Engineering Design Process. They were also finalists in the video contest, in which teams created videos outlining the creation of their robots.
The Tech Challenge, which celebrated its 30th anniversary this weekend, had contestants design, build and test a robot over a period of several months with the goal of creating a machine that could traverse the course designed for the contest. More than 2,500 students from grades 4-12 took part in the contest. Congratulations to these outstanding roboticists!
It was Senior Day at Singh Aquatic Center last week, as Jack Farnham, Michael Auld and Justin Culpepper were honored. In the pool, Ethan Hu, grade 9, Yannick Bohbot-Dridi, grade 11, Alex Yu, grade 10, Auld, Culpepper, Vivian Wang, grade 11 and the girls 200 medley relay team each won their events. Qualifying for CCS were Farnham in the 100 backstroke, Bohbot-Dridi in the 200 individual medley, the girls 200 medley relay team and the girls 200 freestyle relay team. The Eagles head to Sacred Heart Prep for league finals this Friday.
Boys Volleyball
The boys volleyball team is now 14-12 on the season after dropping matches to Saratoga and Cupertino last week. The Eagles host Monta Vista on Wednesday for the final regular season match of the year, which is also Senior Night.
Boys Golf
The boys golf team defeated The King’s Academy 174-255 last week to complete an undefeated season and earn a fourth consecutive league title. Daulet Tuleubayev, grade 11, and Ryan Vaughan, grade 12, each shot a 35 to tie for the top score of the day. This Wednesday, the Eagles travel to Eagle Ridge for the WBAL Championship.
Lacrosse
The lacrosse team picked up a 14-2 win over Notre Dame Belmont and an 8-7 win over Sacred Heart Cathedral last week to bring their season record to 10-6. The Eagles host Mercy Burlingame on Tuesday and Notre Dame San Jose on Friday to finish off league play. The girls are currently in third place in league, but within striking distance of the top two teams.
Softball
The softball team had a roller coaster of a week as it lost a heartbreaking 10-9 game in 10 innings to Cupertino before taking care of Notre Dame San Jose 10-1 later in the week. In the loss to Cupertino, seniors Joyce Li, Grace Park and Marti Sutton each drove in two runs. In the victory over NDSJ, Anika Rajamani, grade 10, had four hits and drove in three runs. Kristin LeBlanc, grade 11, was equally as impressive on the mound as she struck out nine batters to pick up the win. This week, the Eagles host The King’s Academy on Tuesday and Notre Dame Belmont on Thursday.
Boys Tennis
The boys tennis team had an impressive showing at the WBAL Tournament last week as the doubles finals round was Harker vs. Harker. The team of Ed Tischler, grade 12, and Ram Vegesna, grade 9, defeated the duo of Randy Zhao, grade 11, and Neil Bai, grade 11, to earn the league title. Rishi Dange, grade 9, and David Wen, grade 11, went third and fourth respectively in singles play. CCS boys tennis starts on Wednesday.
Baseball
First place El Camino swept two games from the baseball team last week before the Eagles picked up a win over North Valley Baptist. In a 9-1 loss to El Camino, Mitchell Kole, grade 11, drove in the only Harker run. Later in the week, the Eagles fell 9-8 to El Camino with Varun Haltore, grade 12, leading the offense with three hits and an RBI. Finally, the Eagles took care of NVB 10-0 with Dominic Cea, grade 11, picking up three hits and three RBIs. Cea also combined with Tanay Kamat, grade 11, for a no hitter, striking out 10. This week, the Eagles play at Jefferson on Tuesday and at home against Jefferson on Thursday.
Track and Field
The track and field team competed at the final WBAL meet of the regular season and once again had some great results. The boys 400-meter relay team lowered its season best time as it won its event. Setting the second best Harker time and winning the 100 hurdles was Kismet Singh, grade 9. Anthony Contreras, grade 11, took second in the 100 and 200, setting a personal best in the 100. Grace Koonmen, grade 11, improved her best jump by over a foot in the long jump as she took the number three spot in the league rankings. Tiffany Shou, grade 11, and Davis Howard, grade 12, each threw personal bests in the shot put. The Eagles compete at the WBAL trials this Saturday at Palo Alto High.
Alumni
Izzy Connell ’13 continues to break her own records as her Pepperdine track career comes to an end. Check out all of Connell’s accomplishments here:
The career of D.J. Blickenstaff ’09, a musical theater certificate graduate, continues to heat up! Check him out in the trailer for Netflix’s new series, “Dear White People,” which premiered April 28! https://www.instagram.com/p/BRi7bRfh6tx/
Parents, both those new to Harker and those new to a campus, have the opportunity to meet each other at revamped new parent meetings. The outings are relaxed, offering information as well as plenty of time to socialize!