Esther Belogolovsky ’10 was recently named as one of four recipients of a $1,500 Women in Leadership Grant awarded by the San Jose Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce.
The grants – given to Belogolovsky and Christine Sim of Applied Materials, Katee Peek of TeenForce and Jessica Sullivan of Blach Construction – are intended to help the four women continue their educations while working for locally-based businesses. Each awardee receives a separate grant. In the past four years alone, the Women in Leadership Grant Program has issued more than $35,000 in awards.
The grants go to collegiate women who demonstrate extraordinary leadership qualities in a business environment. Applicants must be full-time students and employed or interning at Silicon Valley-based businesses.
Belogolovsky is a communications major and business minor at the University of California, San Diego. Last summer she served as a human resources global leadership and manager development intern at Applied Materials, a global leader in making smartphones, flat-screen TVs and solar panels more affordable and accessible to consumers.
During her time with the company, she created an online survey for newly promoted managers, led benchmarking efforts, conducted global interviews and provided recommendations for improvements to Applied Materials’ new manager orientation program.
“My educational goals are to work in a field that I am truly passionate about, and keep learning on the way!” enthused Belogolovsky, who is now back for a second summer interning with Applied Materials.
Last year, Belogolovsky’s global survey, sent out through Europe and Asia, culminated with her presenting a development plan to HR executives in staffing, recruitment, talent and finance. She also participated in an advanced training program with senior managers (of 20+ years’ experience), in which she observed improvements that could be made to the company’s orientation program. She then assessed the organization’s wellness needs by gathering data from country presidents in Europe and aligning international managers’ needs with local ones.
Belogolovsky and her fellow grant recipients were honored during a special chamber-sponsored dinner in early June, which was attended by more than 350 people at downtown San Jose’s Doubletree Hilton Hotel. Anne Beiler, founder of Auntie Anne’s pretzel franchise, was the keynote speaker at that event.
The Harker Eaglet, the middle school’s new journalistic website, officially launched in May.
Created by the Blackford campus’ newspaper club, The Harker Eaglet (mseaglet.harker.org) is broken up in sections for easy viewing, including news, features, lifestyle, tech, literary, sports and photos.
“The students had a great time creating The (Harker) Eaglet. In the future we shall be adding stories and photos on a weekly basis,” explained Kate Murphy, grade 8 English and expository writing teacher, who also serves as faculty advisor to the site.
Readers can subscribe to The Harker Eaglet to receive email notifications when new posts are made. Murphy urged the entire Harker community to check it out.
Harker’s maturing endowment program produced six scholars this year, all seniors, who each presented their papers in late April to fellow students, parents, faculty and administrators in the Nichols Hall auditorium.
Established in 2009, the John Near Excellence in History Education Endowment Fund, the first of its kind at Harker, was joined by the Mitra Family Endowment for the Humanities in 2011, and since then there have been nine Near scholars and four Mitra scholars, including this year’s awardees.
The $300,000 John Near fund, established in memory of the 31-year veteran of Harker’s teaching staff who passed away in 2009, was made by his parents, James and Patricia Near, to, in John Near’s words, “help develop the history department, both through the acquisition of resources and providing growth opportunities for both faculty and students.”
Harker parents Samir and Sundari Mitra (Shivani, grade 12) established the Mitra Family Endowment, which matches gifts to the annual giving campaign up to a total of $100,000.
This year’s papers ran the gamut from traditional historical research to an examination of social conditions.
Artists
One of the Mitra scholars is actually a Mitra. Shivani Mitra chose an enduring topic for both artists and feminists: Frida Kahlo, the iconic Mexican painter who explored politics, art, feminism and sexuality during the course of her life. Mitra frankly discussed Kahlo’s sexuality, paintings and politics, often referencing Kahlo’s diary, but the most notable portions of the paper were Mitra’s analyses of the crossovers and tie-ins between these three facets of Kahlo’s nature. One example:
“Frida, who was a supporter of the communist party with Diego (Rivera), wore the clothing that symbolized communist allegiance without acknowledgement to the social norm for women to never be involved in politics. In addition to challenging the political position of females, Frida refused to take on the feminine attitude that wives were supposed to in her second marriage. In a personal essay about Diego for an exhibition of Diego’s work in 1940 Frida wrote, ‘Some people may expect me to paint a very personal, ‘feminine,’ anecdotal entertaining portrait of Diego, filled with complaints and even a certain amount of gossip …’”
“In the beginning of my sophomore year I took AP Art History with Ms. (Donna) Gilbert,” Mitra said at the reception, “and I fell in love with this subject. Art history allowed me to learn about the historical periods and individuals of the past through a painter’s hand or a sculptor’s tools filled with color, texture and emotion that really took me back in time and history. When this opportunity came up, I was intrigued by the idea I could explore one of my favorite artists, Frida Kahlo, in much more depth.”
Duels
Near scholar Nina Sabharwal chose one of the most enigmatic episodes in the personal history of the United States’ founding fathers: the duel between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton that resulted in the death of Hamilton and the destruction of Burr’s political life.
Dueling was regarded as the only honorable way to settle a dispute not then actionable under law, and both men were familiar with the practice both as a deterrent and as a remedy for those making disparaging remarks. Indeed, Hamilton lost his beloved eldest son, Phillip, to a duel prior to his own death and, according to “Hamilton” by Ron Chernow, Hamilton had been on the fringes of six other duels, including acting as a second or adviser. Neither Burr nor Hamilton lived an unimpeachable life. Burr schemed to enrich himself and further his political ambitions becoming a controversial figure in U.S. politics as the young country worked out its growing pains. Hamilton was equally busy trying to solidify his place in U.S. politics and history, and the two clashed in the political arena more than once.
“This project has been a culmination of the years of learning in our history classes,” said Sabharwal. “The research skills I’ve acquired will be invaluable to me in college.”
Sabharwal’s conclusion is that “the famous duel was the result, largely, of ill-will formed between the two men over many years. In the specific, Burr accused Hamilton of speaking ill of him in society and sent his second to call on Hamilton. The deadly meeting between the two seems almost inevitable when their history together is examined.”
Composers Near scholar Ashvin Swaminathan delved into political and musical history to plumb the premise that two of the United States’ most influential composers, Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein, both sought to illuminate Hispanic forces in America in their works, especially Copland’s “El Salón México” and Bernstein’s “West Side Story.”
“I really like history because I like finding historical connections between various events,” said Swaminathan, “and I like music and the study of musical history, the study of how the evolution of music and how composers were influenced by the sociopolitical climates of their times. I really wanted to do this research because there has already been much research done on European classical music and how European composers were influenced by the politics of their days. I wanted to create an American parallel for that. Doing this research project has really influenced what I am going to study in college.”
Swaminathan’s work is best defined by a paragraph from his paper: “Copland’s 1936 symphonic work “El Salón México” may be viewed as an artistic reaction to the contemporaneous Mexican Repatriation, and Bernstein’s 1957 musical “West Side Story” must be taken as a politically overt response to the youth gang violence that plagued New York City throughout the 1950s.”
Thus, Swaminathan begins his journey to illuminate what motivated these composers to create works that exposed the cultural pressures of a then-much-overlooked segment of U.S. society. Copland’s composition was stimulated by the forced, government-mandated Mexican repatriation of the 1930, when 500,000 or more people of Mexican heritage, including U.S. citizens, were forced to return to Mexico.
Bernstein’s “West Side Story” is a reflection of the frustration built up as Puerto Ricans emigrated to the U.S. when laws changed granting them citizenship and as World War II created jobs for them on the U.S. mainland. Many ended up in New York.
Swaminathan notes in his paper, “The combination of heightened unemployment on the island, greater perceived job opportunities in alluring mainland U.S. cities like New York and increased affordability of airfares led to a sudden, exponential rise in the migration rate of Puerto Ricans to the U.S. mainland. From 1950 to 1959, a total of about 470,000 Puerto Ricans migrated to the U.S. mainland.”
According to one source, the United States census showed that by 1960 there were more than 600,000 New Yorkers of Puerto Rican birth or parentage, and Swaminathan notes, “As a consequence of New York’s changing ethnic composition, many rivalries arose between teenagers from different ethnic backgrounds; in 1955, New York was plagued by nearly 100 teenage gangs.” It was from these circumstances that Bernstein drew inspiration for “West Side Story.”
Nazi Errors
In a more traditional approach, Mitra scholar Apurva Tandon took on a subject daunting to professional historians, the short- and long-term effects of the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact signed in 1931 and the subsequent violation of that pact in 1941 when the Wehrmacht invaded Russia.
The subject of the pact has been covered extensively by noted historians, but Tandon coalesces the primary mistakes by Hitler that led to the ultimate failure of the Third Reich to survive at all, including fighting an ideological war instead of a political/military war and the utter disregard for the economic dependence Germany had on trade with the Soviet Union that was suspended when the invasion of Russia began.
Perhaps her most interesting point, drawn from a Stanford University lecture by Timothy Snyder, was that Hitler saw his invasion as the second phase of the destruction of Eastern European states, after the Soviet Union had started the job. Tandon asserts Stalin’s purges and ruthless collectivization of farms prior to the start of World War II were the opening act to the main show – Barbarossa – of destroying the populations of the satellite states to produce Lebensraum, and that viewpoint has not been widely aired.
“I’ve enjoyed tackling one of the subjects that is so widely explored in the field,” said Tandon, “and just being able to come up with my very own take on that and then put it out there is scary but rewarding – so truly rewarding. My mind is already racing with another follow-up topic that I want to research in college that is kind of an offshoot of this topic, and having this kind of experience under my belt is what is going to make that possible.”
ERA
In her paper, Near scholar Apricot Tang discussed the most important amendment that never passed, the Equal Rights Amendment, as its journey was affected by two ardent feminists from the right and left, Phyllis Schlafly and Betty Friedan. One of the most controversial amendments to be proposed, it was opposed by labor unions and Eleanor Roosevelt, yet supported by President Dwight Eisenhower and the Republican Party. Roosevelt opposed it because it would block legislation designed to protect women workers from harsh factory conditions, and the amendment seemed designed to help educated middle-class women, and so labor unions opposed it, according to Bookrags.com, an educational research site.
There were three life-changing points Tang experienced, she said. “First, I have found role models for myself. Seeking out the research has helped me be inspired by women such as Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan and Phylis Schlafly, all extremely courageous and strong women of their time. Second, I found myself through the research process: searching, reading, being lost, thinking you’re not lost, then returning to the black fold and the sources. It has been a process through which I have found myself. And third, I’ve been learning about the kind of writer, the kind of student and the kind of thinker I am.”
As the feminist movement grew in the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s, the amendment seems, in retrospect, to be an obvious step forward in ensuring full rights under the law, but it was opposed by Phyllis Schlafly, a forceful, outspoken advocate for traditional womanhood. The amendment’s path in the 1960s and ‘70s could be seen as a reflection of the changing values Americans were all struggling with as Vietnam split communities, unions lost their ability to speak for the American worker and ethnic minorities advocated for equal treatment and protection under the law. Tang’s paper takes on the complex battle that shaped up between Schlafly and Betty Friedan, who founded the National Organization of Women in 1966 following publication of “The Feminine Mystique” in 1963, which examined women’s roles beyond traditional expectations of homemaking and motherhood.
Economics
Mitra scholar Warren Zhang chose to look at societal economics in his paper on how technological growth negatively affected income equality as technology development replaced manufacturing as a major component of the U.S. economy. This ambitious effort delved into the complexities of the job market, maturing understanding of modern economics technological growth and what it meant to everyone from university graduates to line workers in assembly plants.
Zhang’s conclusion is stated in 10 words in the opening sentence: “Modern technology breeds inequality and inhibits sustainable, broad-based growth.” Zhang notes that the income gap between the college-educated and the high school-educated grew after World War II, saying, “A college degree replaced a high school diploma as the mark of an educated person, and high school graduates and high school dropouts increasingly became substitutes in the labor market.”
He goes on to discuss in depth the changes effected by rising wages for the college-educated, the effect of unionization on both workers’ earnings and their college-educated counterparts. Finally, Zhang presents evidence that the rise in wages for college-educated workers and their ability to work more efficiently due to technology (computers) and the drop in unionization has created a dichotomy in our economy that is not sustainable: “Because modern innovations only make a small subset of skilled workers more productive, they induce damaging, even crisis-provoking, inequality,” Zhang said.
“The important thing, and the crux of my paper, is this idea (that) skills buy technological change. If you work with computers, if it is your job to tell the ‘robots’ what to do, to create the programs that make modern life possible, then the rise of information technology has been a wonderful thing.
“On the other hand, if you have a manufacturing job or you are doing some sort of routine office work, there are robots and there is software that will do your job better, faster and more efficiently, and … will never demand vacation, and that is the crux of it. While the growth of information technology has made workers at the top much more productive and thus given them the skills to demand higher and higher wages, it is also much harder to have a middle class job and a middle class life style if you don’t have those skills.”
Next year’s endowment recipients, all seniors, have been chosen. Mitra scholars are Maya Madhavan, Anisha Padwekar and Monica Thukral; Near scholars will be Kevin Duraiswamy, Zina Jawadi, Divya Kalidindi, Connie Li and Angela Ma.
Vandana Kadam, middle school math chair, had her trigonometry students engaged in an interesting project in May. Separated into groups, students devised their own problems and solved them with the knowledge they had gained during their class sessions. To demonstrate how they solved the problems, the groups made posters and PowerPoint presentations. “The idea behind the project is to give students an in-depth understanding of the trigonometric concepts that were taught as part of the course and also see real-life applications of trigonometry,” Kadam said. “All students thoroughly enjoyed the project and did a fabulous job.”
On June 7, Harker student Dolan Dworak, grade 7, and upper school science teacher Kate Schafer will head to the Alaskan coastline to take part in an expedition kickstarted by the Anchorage Museum and the Alaska SeaLife Center, which will be the subject of a Web series planned by National Geographic. Dworak and Schafer will be part of an international team of scientists and artists that will observe the effects of garbage islands on marine life. The work performed during this expedition will later be turned into an exhibition at the Anchorage Museum called GYRE, which will appear at museums throughout the United States.
Dworak, who has spent three years working with the San Francisco-based Sea Scavenger Conservancy to help clean up the earth’s oceans, will act as the expedition’s social media coordinator at the Alaska SeaLife Center, located in Seward. Schafer, who has a background in marine biology and a passion for observing the effects of human activity on ocean ecosystems, will help develop the educational portions of the GYRE exhibition with the Anchorage Museum in preparation for the exhibition’s launch in February 2014.
A red-carpet gala affair capped off a fantastic year in performing arts for many of the cast and crew of Harker’s recent spring musical, “Oklahoma!”
During the June 3 evening event the Harker Conservatory students and educators were honored for a very respectable eight nominations and announced as winners in the sound and choreography categories at the Bay Area High School Musical Theatre: Stage Top Honor Awards.
Held at the California Theatre in downtown San Jose, the gala ceremony featured performances from Harker and all the nominated high schools. Sponsored by the San Jose Stage Company, the prestigious awards program encourages and rewards exceptional accomplishments in the production of high school musical theater across the Bay Area.
Harker’s production of “Oklahoma!,” directed by Laura Lang-Ree, performing arts chair K-12, was among those that stood out from the 19 private and public high school musicals who competed in the awards, which are modeled after Broadway’s Tony Awards.
Among the awards that Harker was nominated for at the recognition event were: overall production, chorus, student achievement in technical theater (Simon Orr, grade 12, stage manager), best supporting actor (Justin Gerard, grade 12), best supporting actress (Shenel Ekici, grade 11), and musical direction (Catherine Snider). The school walked away with top honors for choreography (Katie O’Bryon, specialist) and sound design (Brian Larsen, faculty, and Nicholas Semenza, grade 11).
Lang-Ree said she is “thrilled” with both the nominations and awards. “It’s so great that Brian is recognized for making the very best sound experience in a very difficult space. He does a great job.”
“It’s nice to be singled out for something that you’re passionate about,” said Larsen. “I view our work as collaborative, a true team effort, so recognition of my work is lovely, but I think it reflects on the production as a whole: the choral work of the performers, the amazing musicians in the band – it’s another really strong production in a series of strong productions.”
“Nicky’s work as a sound engineer cannot be complimented strongly enough,” Larsen continued. “He grew into the show, along with the show, and got better and more confident as the run progressed. For me, that’s the greatest part of producing theater in high school: you get to watch first-hand as students gain the skills and confidence to do it themselves.”
Lang-Ree added, “It’s a very special honor to be one of only six shows (out of 19) nominated for best show, and it makes the evening so much fun when we get to perform on that beautiful stage. Performing in front of your peers is an awesome experience. The six casts and production teams were so supportive of each other’s work, and it was rewarding to hear all the positive feedback on our performance from a group of our peers.”
Lang-Ree also expressed her appreciation for choreographer O’Bryon, saying, “To all of us, Katie is part of the Harker family and has been so for over five years. We are so lucky that Harker is the only school where she works as a choreographer as her ‘day job’ as director of Peninsula Youth Theatre keeps her very busy. She is so talented and so much fun to collaborate with, and she brings out the best in our students, no matter what their skill level.”
Judges comprising theater professionals, performing artists, designers and theater arts educators evaluated the various schools’ productions and made their nominations in categories of acting, design, direction, musical direction, choreography, technical production and overall production excellence.
Congratulations to the cast and crew of “Oklahoma!” for a great end-of-the-year musical and a host of nominations and wins at the Top Honor Awards!
Harker students earned several top placements at the California State Science Fair in April. In the senior division, Andrew Zhang, grade 10, and his partner took second place in the physics and astronomy category, classmate Sriram Somasundaram earned third place in microbiology, Christopher Fu and Daniel Pak, both grade 11, took fourth place in zoology, Nikash Shankar was awarded fourth place in pharmacology/toxicology and sophomore Rishabh Jain received an honorable mention in mathematics and software. In the junior division, Venkat Sankar, grade 8, won first place in environmental sciences.
Harker has had a banner year in the athletics department with 17 students recruited by colleges and four planning to play in their sports as walk-ons.
They are: Michael Amick, UCLA, soccer; Kevin Cali, De Anza or West Valley, baseball; Chris Chang, Columbia, crew; Keri Clifford, Santa Clara, water polo; Isabelle Connell, Pepperdine, track & field; Siobhan Cox, Stanford, soccer; Karan Das-Grande, Connecticut College, water polo; Ashley Del Alto, Briar Cliff University, softball; Patricia Huang, Amherst, golf; Daria Karakoulka, Cal Lutheran, tennis; Sierra Lincoln, Cal Tech, water polo; Maverick McNealy, Stanford, golf; Sumit Minocha, Stanford, track & field; Nikhil Panu, Johns Hopkins University, basketball; Andy Perez, UC Santa Barbara, soccer; Daniza Rodriguez, Whittier College, basketball; Arhum Siddiqui, Brown, squash.
Harker held a brief gathering to celebrate the athletes and their committment to their sport just prior to graduation, attended by parents, coaches and players. To these Harker stalwarts we wish the very best of luck in their academic and athletic careers. Go alumni Eagles!
Of all the remarkable milestones Harker students achieve, none is as great or as meaningful as their final rite of passage when they receive their diplomas. The pride was palpable on May 24 at the Mountain Winery as the Class of 2013 collected their diplomas from Chris Nikoloff, head of school.
Ashvin Swaminathan represented his class as valedictorian, and his speech found a perfect balance between honoring the past and becoming ready for the future. He posed the question, “By what means did every one of us manage to triumph over our tribulations?” The answer? “Our parents.” Swaminathan adjured his classmates, “Let us vow to continue to treat our parents as our heroes,” to honor them and make them proud.
He asked his peers to vow to “never compromise on the value system that our teachers have established for us,” adding, “Let us vow to share our leftover resources with those who are not as fortunate as we are.”
The teachers who had led Swaminathan and his classmates on what he called a “beautiful scholastic safari” were on their feet moments after his talk concluded.
Keynote speaker Nipun Mehta is the founder of ServiceSpace, an organization dedicated to volunteerism which has nurtured projects resulting in the gifting of millions of dollars of services.
Mehta’s engaging speech was a rallying cry to fix what is “at the core of all of today’s most pressing challenges: … we have become profoundly disconnected.” He says humans are wired to give and to help each other, and asked, “Will you, Class of 2013, step up to rebuild a culture of trust, empathy and compassion?”
There are three keys to living a life of giving, Mehta said. The first is to give, the second is to receive, and the third is to dance. “Our biggest problem with giving and receiving is that we try and track it. And when we do that, we lose the beat.”
Nikoloff also had an opportunity to offer some words of wisdom to the class, which he did in a light-hearted talk titled “Love like a Labrador,” meaning unconditionally and with joy.
A two-part show on May 3, titled “In Concert,” brought together all of the upper school vocal groups to ring in the summer and bid farewell to the graduating seniors and honor them for their dedication to Harker’s performing arts programs.
The first portion of the show was dedicated primarily to songs hailing from Great Britain and the countries that were part of its once-massive empire. The upper school’s all-female chamber group Cantilena teamed up with Camerata, the mixed chamber choir, for Stephen Leek’s “Kungala (Australia),” the first song of the show. Other great selections included Camerata’s performance of “Shoot False Love” by Thomas Morley, the Monty Python classic “Brave Sir Robin” sung by the ever-popular boys a cappella group Guys’ Gig and a solo performance of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “Silent Noon” by baritone Stephan Pellissier, grade 11. Cantilena closed the first portion of the show with their rendition of the Sting hit “Fields of Gold.”
Bel Canto kicked off the second part of the show with a pair of African folk songs and medley of songs from Leonard Bernstein’s beloved score from “West Side Story.”
Upper school show choir Downbeat concluded the concert, singing a variety of pop standards, including the poignant a cappella song by Billy Joel, “And So It Goes,” and Paul Simon’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” the group’s now-traditional closer. They also recreated their fashion show hit, “Wings,” to the clear delight of the audience.