Congrats to 15 Harker seniors who were named 2015 U.S. Presidential Scholars Competition candidates and one who was named a semifinalist.
About 4,300 candidates were winnowed from the pool of 3.3 million high school students, about a 10th of 1 percent of the pool. Harker’s candidates were William Bloomquist, Jason Chu, Vivek Sriram, Juhi Gupta, Savi Joshi, Kevin Zhang, Pranav Reddy, Apoorva Rangan, Patrick Lin, Richard Gu, Neil Movva, Simran Singh, Nitya Mani, Helen Wu and Menghua Wu. Joshi was then named a semifinalist – one of only 565 nationwide. Congrats to all for this wonderful recognition! For more, go to: http://www.ed.gov/psp.
Harker alumni include four Presidential Scholars. Katie Siegle ’12 was the first Harker female honored for academic achievement. Samantha Fang ’06 was named a Presidential Scholar in the Arts in 2006; Senan Ebrahim ’08 was named a Presidential Scholar in 2008; and Daniel Kim ’09 was named a Presidential Scholar in 2009.
Sarah Gonzalez, grade 10, and her teammates were chosen as Silicon Valley FIRST Robotics Competition Dean’s List Award winners, earning them an invitation to attend the FIRST World Championship in St. Louis, Mo.
Gonzalez won the award with her team, “The Subatomic Smarticles” (Team No. 5677), an independent team comprising students from several high schools. The Dean’s List Award began in 2010 to celebrate outstanding student leaders with exemplary passion for and effectiveness at attaining FIRST ideals. Nominees, finalists and winners are recognized as examples of student leaders who have increased awareness of FIRST and its mission, while achieving personal technical expertise and accomplishment.
Over the last weekend in March, Harker Latin students headed to Miramonte High School in Orinda to attend the 60th annual Junior Classical League (JCL) State Convention.
This year’s convention theme was “Tu ne cede malis, sed contra audentior ito” (“Yield not to misfortunes, but advance all the more boldly against them.” – Vergil Aeneid VI.95). At the convention, students enjoyed workshops, fellowship with Latin students from all over the state, and competitions involving many aspects of classical knowledge.
During the weekend, grade 12 student Maya Nandakumar earned the most points of anyone, with seven first place wins for a total of 17 awards. Counted among those were the individual overall awards for arts and academics, garnering her the greatest number of points in each of those single categories as well.
“This convention was really the culmination of my long journey as a classicist here at Harker. When I started back in the sixth grade, I remember being enamored with the attitude and passion of the attendees, and that really sparked my curiosity for Latin. Since then, pretty much every activity I’ve been a part of has, in one way or another, been a branch of my zeal for the ancient world,” recalled Nandakumar.
“I knew that for my final convention, I wanted to leave this organization with no regrets, and for me that manifested in entering nearly every competition I could. There were so many contests that I’d always wanted to try and never had the courage to. Knowing that this was my last chance pushed me to my limits during the two days of convention. Overall, the experience was incredibly bittersweet, but the perfect way to finish my time here,” she added.
Reddy’s winning debate was on the topic of minimum wage and whether it should be substantially increased. The senior successfully affirmed the proposal.
Reddy won two national titles in April – the NDCA National Championships and the Tournament of Champions.
“His achievements are truly historic,” said Greg Achten, Harker’s Lincoln-Douglas team coach. “Winning one national championship tournament takes hard work, incredible intellectual range and exceptional speaking skills. To win three national titles over the course of two years is simply an unheard of accomplishment. In the history of Lincoln-Douglas debate, no student from any school has ever achieved this level of success.”
Reddy entered the 2014-15 debate season as the No. 1-ranked Lincoln-Douglas debater in the nation. He lived up to that ranking with a pair of winning premier national championship tournaments.
This recent success follows a successful 2013-14 season in which Reddy became the first Harker Lincoln-Douglas debater to win the prestigious NDCA National Championships. Reddy built on this success his senior year, being named the top speaker at five of the first six tournaments he attended and winning the Glenbrooks tournament in November, the largest tournament of the fall semester.
Along with these, Reddy also won the Harvard Westlake tournament in January and entered the championship season as the only student to win two majors in the regular season. He is the first student ever to win this tournament twice. Reddy is also only the second student in the history of Lincoln-Douglas debate to win the NDCA National Championships and the Tournament of Champions in the same year.
Joining him in his debating success, the Harker speech and debate team also had an amazing showing at the Tournament of Champions. The event, hosted by the University of Kentucky April 24-27, is one of the premier national championships and included students from more than 200 different schools and 30 states.
Harker was awarded the first-place sweepstakes award after successfully finishing all four of the debate divisions and the individual events category, making the Harker team the most successful overall squad to attend the tournament.
The policy debate duo of Panny Shan, grade 11, and Ayush Midha, grade 12, made it to the octofinal debate round. Public forum debaters Nikhil Kishore, grade 12, Vamsi Gadiraju, grade 12, Abhinav Ketineni, grade 11, and Jasmine Liu, grade 11, were in double octofinals and the team of Alexander Lam, grade 10, and David Jin, grade 11, were in the octofinals. Aditya Dhar, grade 10, made it to the semifinals of congressional debate and Arjun Narayan, grade 11, was a quarterfinalist in extemporaneous speaking. Reddy, Midha and Lam also were recognized with outstanding individual speaker awards.
In the 44-year history of the event, no other school has ever had students reach elimination rounds in more than three of the events. Harker had students excel in all five.
Congratulations to the boys, who qualified for CCS and then won their first round match-up against Carlmont 6-1. The Eagles are now 16-3 overall. They travel to eighth-seed Westmont, just around the corner from the Bucknall campus, for their second-round matchup at 3 p.m. today. Come on out and cheer them to victory! A win today equals CCS quarterfinals and Harker history!
Big news! Coach Scott Chisam was named the CCS honor coach for boys track and field and will be honored at the CCS Championships on May 29 at San Jose City College! As CCS’s assistant commissioner Duane Morgan wrote, “We all know that quality programs are attained by quality players and quality coaches; [Scott’s] accomplishments in track and field reach far beyond the ‘W’s’ and ‘L’s’ and reach the ultimate in coaching.” Congratulations, Scott!
Golf
The boys squad is among the section’s elite; it qualified for the CCS finals with a fourth-place finish at CCS regional No. 2 and is now one of the final eight teams. Sophomore Ryan Vaughan and senior Shrish Dwivedi led the Eagles with 73s. The finals are this Tuesday in Carmel; the top three teams will advance to the NorCals.
For more information on the results, you can follow this link:
The Eagles triumphed 10-9 over Pinewood on Tuesday in a PAL league game. Freshman Dominic Cea had four hits and drove in five runs, including the game-winning single in the bottom of the seventh to lead the Eagle offensive attack. Sophomore Varun Haltore pitched solidly into the fifth inning, allowing only two earned runs, while freshman Nate Kelly picked up the win in relief.
Christopher Hildum, grade 12, was named one of three dance finalists for the 2015 Steve Silver Foundation and Beach Blanket Babylon “Scholarship for the Arts.” Hildum has trained for many years in dance and it is an honor just to make to the final round of the scholarship awards. Finalists will perform live in front of panel of judges on June 1 and one winner in each category will be presented with a check for $10,000 toward their college education. Read all about it, here!
Three students were honored for their submissions to the Growing Up Asian in America Awards. Freshman Emily Chen’s essay, “Airplane Dreams,” was named best in class; Angela Kim, grade 10, received an honorable mention for her art submission, “The Game of Immigration;” Katrina Liou, grade 8, also received an honorable mention for her art submission, “Waving Goodbye.”
“I think it is wonderful that three talented students from Harker are part of this year’s GUAA Awards,” said Andrea Yamazaki Williamson, advisory committee member. “It is GUAA’s 20th anniversary, so it’s a special year and milestone for the program.”
The contest solicits works of art, essays and videos from students in grades K-12 that show what it’s like to grow up both Asian and American in the Bay Area.
“There were close to 800 submissions this year and a total of 20 winners and 30 honorable mentions from throughout the nine-county Bay Area,” noted Williamson. The awards ceremony took place May 3 at the Asian Art Museum.
Harker is sending two veterans to the USA Computing Olympiad summer training camp. Lawrence Li, grade 11, and David Zhu, grade 10, are among 24 selected nationwide to attend the camp. Li attended the camp in 2013 and Zhu in 2014.
Selected for their outstanding performance on USACO contests throughout the 2014-15 season, Li and Zhu will be challenged by advanced instructional material provided by the USACO staff. The training camp will run from May 20-30. Participants will be competing for four spots on the final team that will represent the USA at the 2015 International Olympiad in Informatics in Kazakhstan. Here is full list of those selected to attend the camp.
Heartiest congratulations to Lawrence and David! Good luck at the camp!
Harker will host free lacrosse clinics for middle school girls (those currently in grades 6, 7 and 8) on May 26 and May 28. The clinics will be held at Rosenthal Field (natural grass field) at Harker’s upper school campus (500 Saratoga Ave., San Jose) from 4-5 p.m.
On both dates, a bus will be provided at 3:45 p.m. for Harker students to take them from the middle school to upper school campus for the clinics. Parents can pick them up at 5 p.m. at the upper school campus or the girls can take the 5:05 p.m. intercampus shuttle back to the middle school campus.
Participants not enrolled at Harker should come directly to the upper school campus.
Participants should wear athletic clothes and shoes. All other gear (sticks and balls) will be provided.
There is no charge for the clinics and preregistration is not required. Just be there at 4 p.m.!
A group of Harker’s upper school students recently attended the Bioengineering High School Competition (BioEHSC) at UC Berkeley. The annual research and design competition is intended for high school students interested in the fast-growing fields of biotechnology and bioengineering.
The Harker team (Natalie Simonian, grade 11, Natasha Santhanam, grade 11, Madhu Karra, grade 11, Taylor Iantosca, grade 10, and Uma Rao, grade 10) received second place in the category of Biomedical Devices for their project, titled “Automatic Negative Feedback Loop for Amyloidosis.”
The competition, which takes place each spring, is hosted by the UC Berkeley Bioengineering Honor Society. It included poster sessions from schools across the Bay Area, presentations from Berkeley undergraduate researchers and a keynote address from Dr. Jacob Corn, scientific director at the Innovative Genomics Initiative (IGI).
The IGI Lab is composed of branch laboratories at UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco, which address the IGI’s primary research focus into drug discovery, regulatory variation and treatments for pediatric disease, as well as applications in gene editing.
To help high school students explore bioengineering, BioEHSC asks them to identify a problem in medicine and then design a bioengineering solution in just six weeks. Contestants collaborate in groups (of four or five) and receive mentorship. After the six weeks, the students create a research poster about their problem, proposed solution and analysis of potential concerns. They present their findings for evaluation to a panel of professors and graduate students during the final research symposium.
Upper school biology teacher Mike Pistacchi mentored Harker’s team. “The students did an amazing job of finding creative technical solutions to a medical problem. This involved doing a lot of background research and learning about a wide array of advanced bioengineering concepts and techniques. I really enjoyed meeting with the team because they were so full of great ideas and had a genuine willingness to work hard, learn and innovate. A great learning experience for all!” he said.