The American High School Theatre Festival has invited the Harker Conservatory’s musical theater program to perform their production of “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee” at the 2023 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the world’s largest international arts festival. More than 450 schools applied to be one of the 25 selected, making this one of the most competitive seasons in AHSTF’s history. Harker has performed at Fringe every four years since first being invited in 2007.
“Director [Laura] Lang-Ree’s program at The Harker School once again shines as one of the best applications we have seen this year,” said a spokesperson for AHSTF. “Hundreds of schools around the world have applied this year and while we have an extensive waiting list, this theater program is one of 25 that immediately got through as a finalist for AHSTF once again.”
At Wednesday’s Leadership Donor Celebration, held at the middle school campus, Neil Mehta ’02 announced the establishment of The Mehta Endowment in Support of Scholarships and Entrepreneurship. This new endowment will provide financial assistance in the form of scholarships to qualified students who otherwise could not attend Harker. It also will support Harker’s business and entrepreneurship program with the creation of the Mehta Scholar Program, developing Harker’s network of student, alumni and parent entrepreneurs and investors.
A member of the first Harker upper school graduating class, Mehta said at the event that finding a way for more students to receive the unique kind of high-quality education he received at Harker has been a dream ever since he wore the cap and gown 20 years ago. “Harker changed my life in remarkable ways, and ever since I graduated, I’ve been looking for opportunities to pay it forward,” said Mehta, who is now the founder and managing director at Green Oaks Capital. “Today, I’m pleased to share that at least five students each year will be able to attend the upper school with a scholarship specifically designed to support young people of diverse socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds.”
The endowment will be established with an initial gift of $5 million, and every amount donated to the Harker capital fund as part of the donors’ 125th Anniversary Gift will be matched, up to an additional $5 million. The full transcript of Mehta’s announcement speech at the event has been provided below:
Dear Fellow Members of The Harker Community,
I won life’s lottery the day I was born. I was fortunate to grow up with remarkable parents who cared deeply about who I would become, and who provided me with a set of values and priorities that allowed me to flourish within and beyond the walls of the classroom. Harker took this luck and amplified it. Since its earliest days, Harker has had an ability to bring out the best in young people – to push them to achieve things they don’t think themselves capable of; to expand the horizons of their minds; to remind them that hard work matters, and that to whom much is given, much is also expected. All of those things were true for me.
Harker changed my life in remarkable ways, and ever since I graduated, I’ve been looking for opportunities to pay it forward. Today, I’m pleased to share that at least five students each year will be able to attend the upper school with a scholarship specifically designed to support young people of diverse socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds.
It’s no exaggeration to say that whatever personal or professional accomplishments I’ve enjoyed in my life wouldn’t have been possible without the opportunities that I was afforded at Harker. I had extraordinary teachers who challenged me intellectually. I had sports coaches who put in time and effort to shape the person I would become (and encouraged us to play on, even as a new varsity program that was sometimes hilariously overmatched). And I had exceptional peers who were by my side throughout high school, many of whom remain my closest friends even today.
As more time has passed since graduation, I’ve come to appreciate a few things. First, while raw talent is evenly distributed, the opportunity to make the most of it remains largely limited to the well-off. Too many brilliant young people never attain their greatest potential simply because their families lack the resources to give them the best shot at it. Second, education is one of the highest leverage ways to amplify opportunity. When you are able to influence someone positively, early on in their development, you can profoundly change the arc of their life. And third, Harker provides the kind of education that gives talented students a springboard to become people of consequence – not just learners, but doers. A Harker education is an investment that pays lifelong dividends.
The Harker School is an exceptional place in the truest sense of the word. At a time when many schools in California are shuttering programs that let students aim for and achieve their grandest ambitions, Harker remains an exception, cultivating talented minds and affording them the conditions to flourish. It’s a place where you succeed because of what you can do.
Nowhere is there more human potential than in the young minds of our future. Their talent and energy are more urgently needed today than ever before. I’m confident that Harker is the right steward for those minds and hopeful that the Mehta Scholarship will help open its doors to anyone who can make the most of it, regardless of their ability to pay. My aspiration is for this scholarship to change the lives of its recipients, and also for its recipients to change the face of Harker, helping build a school that represents the technicolor of our community.
If you’re a high-achieving young person with big dreams, I hope you take the time to apply, even and especially if you don’t think that you could afford a school like Harker. I’m supporting this scholarship because the greatest talents, those that can really put a dent in the world, are vanishingly rare. To miss out on your potential simply because some are born lucky and others aren’t, is a loss not just for you, but for all of us. The Mehta scholarships are a small step towards ensuring that more talented students will have the opportunity to make the most of their abilities. We can’t wait to see what you’ll do.
P.S. One person in particular deserves special gratitude for his work with me on this gift is Joe Rosenthal. Joe took a keen interest in me as an unremarkable 14 year old. When I felt like giving up, he wouldn’t let me. He encouraged me to dream big when it felt irresponsible to do so. Thank you, Joe.
Last week, senior Ishaan Mantripragada was named the Central Coast Section Male Scholar-Athlete of the Year. The four-year soccer player was named WBAL All-League and WBAL Forward of the Year and was a valued member of the 2020 CCS championship team. He was also recognized for volunteering for Kicks Against Cancer, participating in the Synopsys Science & Technology Championship and receiving a 2020 President’s Gold Volunteer Service Award, all while maintaining strong academic performance. Mantripragada was one of several athletes honored at a special luncheon on Tuesday.
In other CCS news, six Harker athletics teams were named winners of 2021-22 Spring Season Scholastic Championship Team Awards last week. These awards recognize the top five varsity teams from each sport that have maintained the highest collective GPA in their respect sports during the spring athletic season. The boys baseball, boys volleyball, girls swimming, boys tennis, boys track and field and girls track and field teams were all selected to receive this award.
The American Volleyball Coaches Association named Jarrett Anderson ’19, who currently plays for Springfield College, their NCAA Division III Men’s National Player of the Year last week. A first-team NVA/AVCA All-American for three straight seasons, Anderson was a major factor in Springfield’s appearance in the NCAA Division III National Championship semifinals this year. This season he recorded 264 kills, 107 digs, 78 aces and 46 blocks.
At last month’s Bay Area Mathematics Olympiad, Harker won second place team awards at the BAMO-8 and BAMO-12 levels for middle and high school students, respectively. Team awards are determined by comparing the sums of the top three scores from each team. Harker also took second place in the BAMO-12 participation awards, which are awarded to schools with the most students who scored at least seven points.
Harker students performed very well individually. In BAMO-8, eighth grader Lily Shi scored 30 out of a possible 35 points and eighth graders Caden Ruan, Kallie Wang and seventh grader Axel Szolusha each received an honorable mention for scoring between 27 to 29 points. At the BAMO-12 level, ninth grader Aarush Vailaya scored a perfect 35 points, while junior Sally Zhu scored 32. Catherine Li, Ethan Liu and Rohan Ramkumar received honorable mentions for scoring 25 to 31 points.
Each BAMO consists of five essay questions that must be solved within a four-hour time limit.
Mindy Truong, grade 8, was recently named a second place winner in American Protégé’s spring 2022 Music Talent Competition for her piano performance of “Presto agitato” from Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 14. As one of the higher placing competitors, Truong has been invited to perform at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall during American Protégé’s 2023 season.
Young musicians from around the world submit video auditions to American Protégé each year in a variety of categories. Earlier this year, Harker students Christine and James Tao (grades 7 and 5, respectively) also were invited to perform for the 2023 season.
Last weekend, the Harker Research Symposium welcomed attendees to the upper school campus for the first time since 2019. This annual celebration of the sciences, organized by the students of Women in STEM, invites the Harker community to view presentations and hear talks by Harker students and experts in a variety of fields, as well as get a glance at the exciting innovations on the horizon.
In her morning welcome address, science department chair and symposium founder Anita Chetty remarked that more than 60 poster presentations were being given by Harker middle and upper school students, a new record for the event. Attendees spent much of the day perusing the spaces in the athletic center and Rothschild Performing Arts Center where the presentations were being hosted.
The theme of this year’s symposium, “STEM Will Save Us,” dealt with the many ways that STEM disciplines are responding to current and upcoming challenges. Kamini Varma, VP of genetic testing solutions R&D at Thermo Fisher, was the first morning keynote speaker. Her talk, titled “The COVID-19 Diaries,” covered her experience during the COVID-19 pandemic working in molecular diagnostics. It was a project that began not long after shelter-in-place orders were enacted, which Varma described as feeling like a diary or book. “I started to put together the COVID-19 diaries actually in April of 2020, when I was asked to present a talk, she said. “I had no clue that two years later, we would still be adding new chapters.”
Artificial intelligence was a major topic at this symposium, with Helm.ai demonstrating its self-driving software outside Nichols Hall for much of the day, while Harker’s AI Club gave a presentation on ethical and unethical uses of AI in the present and beyond. Also discussing this topic was the second morning keynote speaker, Yanbing Li, senior VP of engineering at Aurora, developers of the Aurora Driver self-driving system that has vehicles in testing in the Bay Area, Pittsburgh and Dallas. “Self-driving technology has been the pursuit of our generation,” she said. “It always feels so close, but it also feels still far away.” Li’s presentation covered the ways Aurora’s technology is addressing safety concerns while also bringing self-driving technology closer to being a fully realized commercial product.
At a special alumni panel, Steven Botte ‘82, Ashley Morishige ‘07 (via Zoom), Amy Rorabaugh ‘10, Simar Bajaj ‘20, Daniza Rodriguez ‘13, Jasmine Wiese ‘20 and Allison Sommers ’21 covered important topics in diversity, equity and inclusion, including changes that must be made in corporate culture to increase diversity, how the Harker community helped and supported them in affirming their identities and what improvements the community can make for a more equitable environment. Each of the panelists were given the opportunity to talk at length about their unique experiences and how to approach conversations about race, sexuality and gender identity.
Senan Ebrahim ’08 and Hassaan Ebrahim ’11, this year’s alumni keynote speakers, gave a presentation on their journey to co-founding Hikma Health, a nonprofit that provides free health data systems to organizations providing health care to refugees. Their path included partnerships with groups around the world and engaging with their network to find people who could help build the technology. The primary goal of Hikma Health is to provide readily accessible and up-to-date information to clinicians so that they can offer refugees “the kind of personalized care that they truly deserve as compared to what we had been observing routinely on the ground,” Senan said.
Throughout the day, guests visited the exhibitor area where companies including Google, Nvidia and Microsoft demonstrated some of their products. They also made their way to the Nichols Hall rotunda, where several stations of fun activities were set up for the younger science enthusiasts in attendance.
The first afternoon keynote speaker was Hari Mix, assistant professor of environmental studies and sciences at Santa Clara University and an experienced climber with a total of five months on Mt. Everest. Mix surveyed the various environmental, social and economic changes that have been brought to the area around Mt. Everest, as well as possible solutions to the problems posed by human waste and climate change, including those that have affected the people indigenous to the area of Nepal where the mountain stands. Mix, whose current goal is to reach the summit of Mt. Everest without the assistance of supplemental oxygen, advised the students in the audience to learn to appreciate the journey. “My lesson for The Harker School students today is to really focus on the process more than the achievement or the outcome,” he said.
Speaking last for the day was Upendra Mardikar, chief security officer at Snap Finance, who advised guests on how to be “Cyber Smart,” summarizing the different types of security risks presented by the growing presence of smart devices in our daily lives. These include threats from online predators, cyberbullying and the acquisition and sale of personal information. He also discussed some proper and improper ways to respond to these risks. Despite the many threats people should be cognizant of, Mardikar advised caution, not panic. “The idea is not to scare you,” he said. “Don’t be scared, just be careful.”
Last month, fifth graders Rohan Rajaram and Dylan Tang, and third grader Ethan Guo participated in the California State Chess Championship, where over 400 players competed across various sections. Rajaram won the K-5 section, with Guo taking second place and Tang taking fourth. Together, their strong performance enabled Harker to win the K-5 section! Great job!
This story was submitted by Harker speech and debate chair Jenny Achten.
Last weekend, senior Anshul Reddy won the prestigious National Debate Coaches Association Championship, one of the big three speech and debate championships attended by teams from across the United States. Reddy had a perfect record in preliminary rounds and lost just one ballot in elimination rounds. The national topic was “Resolved: The appropriation of outer space by private entities is unjust.” Senior Deven Shah, junior Muzzi Khan and sophomore Kabir Buch also qualified for Lincoln-Douglas elimination rounds. Junior Carol Wininger and sophomores Max Xing, Sasha Masson and Adrian Liu represented Harker in public forum debate elimination rounds, debating the desirability of organic agriculture.
This story was submitted by middle school Latin teacher Lisa Masoni.
A delegation of 19 middle school Latin students kicked off spring break with the Junior Classical League’s second (and hopefully last) Virtual State Latin Convention. Some students chose to attend virtually together, welcoming a group of upper school students to the library to attend assemblies, workshops and competitions over Zoom. It was the first visit to the Union campus for some of the upper school students.
The middle school delegation took third place in Spirit with seventh grader Megha Unny’s poster and song parody, titled “The Twelve Days of Saturnalia.” Other school awards included first place for Scrapbook (Chelsea Xie, historian, grade 7) and third for T-shirt Design (Raeanne Li, grade 7).
The MS1 certamen (quiz bowl) team of sixth graders Avi Gupta, Rory Hu, Zahra Syed and Lucas Yuan placed first in the state. The MS3 team – eighth graders Aidan Okyar, Kairui Sun and Rahul Sundaresan – placed second in their division, and the MS2 team – seventh graders Ameera Ramzan, Sanjith Senthil, Vera Sorotokin and Chelsea Xie – lost a heartbreaking tie breaker for third place and a seat in the final round, but fourth in the state is nothing to sneeze at!
Several upper school students will serve on the California JCL state board for the 2022-23 school year: sophomore Trisha Iyer as historian and junior Tiffany Chang as Nuntius editor. In addition, junior Rupert Chen was approved by the state to run for national first vice president.
Last but not least, Raeanne Li’s opinion piece for The Eagle Gazette on the need for students to respect each other’s choices for language study won Best School-Affiliated Media in the National Junior Classical League Publicity Contest for the month of March, with the following notification from the NJCL:
“Thank you for your submission for the Publicity Contest. This was a wonderful article, and we were moved by the message.”
Individual awards for the middle school delegates are listed below:
MS1/Grade 6:
Avi Gupta: Second in Daily Life, third in Derivatives, second in Pentathlon
Rory Hu: First in Derivatives, first in Reading Comprehension, first in Vocabulary, third in Dramatic Interpretation
Charlene Li: Fourth in Grammar, third in Mythology
Zahra Syed: First in Geography, second in Derivatives, first in Mythology
Lucas Yuan: Second in Geography, first in Grammar, first in Pentathlon, second in Reading Comprehension
MS2/Grade 7:
Shamik Khowala: Second in Daily Life, fourth in Mottoes; third in Reading Comprehension, first in Vocabulary, third in Dramatic Interpretation, second in Sight Reading
Lily Peng: Second in Classical Art, third in Geography, fourth in Daily Life, third in Grammar
Ameera Ramzan: Third in E-lympika Sit-ups, third in Daily Life, second in Grammar, second in Roman History, second in Reading Comprehension, third in Vocabulary, second in Latin Oratory
Vera Sorotokin: First in Vocabulary, first in Mottoes
Abby Wang: First in Daily Life, third in Derivatives, fourth in Reading Comprehension
Chelsea Xie: Third in Derivatives, third in Reading Comprehension, second in Dramatic Interpretation
Demi Zheng: Fourth in Derivatives
MS3/Grade 8:
Marisa Masoni: Third in Mythology, first in Painting, first in Mosaic
Aidan Okyar: First in Classical Art, first in Roman History, first in Mottoes, second in Mythology
Kairui Sun: First in Derivatives, first in Grammar, first in Reading Comprehension
Rahul Sundaresan: Second in Roman History, first in Mythology
Jonathan Szeto: First in Geography, second in Reading Comprehension
Late last month, this year’s Near-Mitra scholars held virtual salons, which consisted of a presentation summarizing each scholar’s research followed by a Q&A session. Each of the student scholars was mentored by faculty members who received grants from the Chen Lin Family Endowment. The salons were well-attended, averaging 35 people for each talk and 250 overall.
Salons were held on three separate days, starting on March 22 with Caden Lin’s presentation on the International Monetary Fund’s role in destabilizing Sierra Leone’s economy, which eventually led to civil war. Lin, mentored by speech and debate chair Jenny Achten and upper school librarian Meredith Cranston, began with Sierra Leone’s independence from Britain in 1961. When the country’s initial economic strength had begun to wane, the IMF offered aid, initially with promising results. However, Lin pointed out, IMF also devalued Sierra Leone’s currency and made its exports cheaper, leading to economic disaster over the next two decades.
Three more salons were held on March 24, the first of which featured Michelle Liu, who analyzed American painter Mary Cassatt’s use of techniques inspired by Japanese woodblock prints, a style known as ukiyo-e. Liu, whose mentors were Cranston and upper school history teacher Donna Gilbert, noted Cassatt’s affinity for mother-and-child themes, pointing out the similarities of her renderings of children and those of Japanese woodblock artist Kitagawa Utamaro. Liu also highlighted Cassatt’s use of domestic scenes, which reflected prevailing viewpoints on gender in the late 19th century.
Senior Dawson Chen, mentored by Cranston and upper school history teacher Katy Rees, analyzed the films of documentarian Pare Lorentz and their impact on documentary filmmaking. Famously known as “FDR’s filmmaker,” Lorentz made several films to promote then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. Chen demonstrated how in works such as “The Plow that Broke the Plains,” Lorentz documented the over-farming that eventually led to the Dust Bowl, powerfully advocating for the restoration of the land.
Under the mentorship of upper school history teacher Chris Gatto and library director Lauri Vaughan, Riyaa Randhawa’s presentation covered the role teachers played in establishing the public health system during the American occupation of the Philippines. Filipino students, Randhawa explained, had a unique relationship to the teachers in the American schools they were required to attend, which led to greater knowledge of public health measures. Nevertheless, schools often enforced racial hierarchies by teaching students that their culture and customs were inferior, and education was designed to only qualify them for low-level jobs.
The final group of salons took place on March 28, beginning with Nicole Tian’s presentation on the Brandeis Brief’s influence on law practice and lawmaking in the progressive era, and how it furthered the idea that legal decisions should consider their societal impact. Tian also connected the brief to widely held beliefs about women at the time, particularly that women were the virtuous and moral center of the American family, while men provided economic stability. Lawyer Louis Brandeis successfully argued in Muller v. Oregon that 10-hour workdays for laundry women threatened the nation’s moral character. Tian conducted her research with the mentorship of upper school history teacher Carol Green and upper school librarian Amy Pelman.
Alina Yuan, mentored by Vaughan and upper school English teacher Beth Wahl, covered the work of Japanese author Osamu Dazai, whose work was a cornerstone of the buraiha (“decadent school”) literary movement that became popular in post-World War II Japan. Following the shock and horror of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the subsequent societal transformation that took place due to heavy American influence, Dazai depicted the struggle of adjusting to post-war Japanese society Dazai also became admired for his decadent lifestyle, another sign of shifting cultural attitudes.
Finally, William Zhao, whose mentors were Pelman and upper school history teacher Byron Stevens, compared and contrasted the development of liberal democracies in Spain and Portugal in the 20th century. The fall of Spain’s authoritarian Francoist regime and the subsequent transition to democracy, Zhao said, was the result of a top-down process by which opposition and reformist forces in the government dismantled the Francoist political infrastructure. Portugal, by contrast, experienced a coup d’etat by a military fed up with prime minister Antonio Salazar’s insistence on maintaining colonial operations in several African nations.