This article was originally published in the fall 2012 Harker Quarterly.
Upper school students, faculty and staff saw firsthand the results of Harker parent philanthropy as they set foot on campus at the start of the year. Digital signs, manufactured by Cisco, have been placed at various points around the campus to inform passersby of upcoming events, lunch menus, sports scores and more.
The signs are expected to be a big help in keeping those traversing the upper school campus up to date on the many happenings at Saratoga, while also allowing several of the school’s key donors to see the fruits of their donations and hard work. The hardware for the project was made available to Harker through a special Cisco donation program, wherein Cisco employees can have three dollars added to every dollar they donate if the donation is made in Cisco products equal to that value. Thanks to the coordinated efforts of Harker parents employed at Cisco, the school has saved hundreds of thousands of dollars on Cisco products in the last several years.
“For many years, the Cisco families have been giving us stuff which blinks in closets, and so they don’t get the opportunity to say, ‘See, I helped buy that,’” said Dan Hudkins, director of instructional technology. making the latest Cisco implementation visible to all who pass through the upper school campus on a daily basis is also an outward gesture of thanks to Cisco families.
The signs have been placed in strategic locations with large amounts of foot traffic to ensure that they are viewed by as many people as possible. Three of the screens are located in the main classroom building: one in the lobby, one just outside the college counseling office and another in the hallway near the northern entrance of the building. The Shah Hall and Dobbins Hall lobbies each have one of their own, as does the Nichols Hall atrium. One more will sit on the wall in the Manzanita Hall dining room.
Each sign’s content is tailored to the area where it is located. For instance, the dining room sign will be updated daily with lunch menus, while the sign in the main building hallway may contain announcements, information about upcoming events or video clips of recent sports highlights. The content of each sign is handled by a person in the building or department where the screen is located.
The signs, however, are just one component of a planned multimedia technology project to produce and share video with the Harker community in a variety of ways. Once fully implemented, Cisco’s Show and Share server will enable those who produce videos at Harker to quickly and easily encode their videos into various formats and then make them available to the appropriate audiences.
“Sometimes there are things that you want to share with everybody. YouTube works great for that,” Hudkins said. But some things you only want available to students. Some things you only want available to upper school students. Maybe you have a recording of a faculty meeting; you only want the rest of the faculty to see it.”
Using the server, video producers will also be able to simultaneously create videos for a wide variety of devices, including high-definition TVs, laptops and smartphones.
Both Show and Share and the digital signs are part of Cisco’s Digital Media Management Suite, meaning videos produced by Show and Share can easily be output to the signs.
The Show and Share server is planned for rollout over the course of the 2012-13 school year. Digital signs are tentatively expected to appear at other Harker campuses by the spring of 2013.
Over the summer, tech also completed the installation of Cisco’s LAN Management System (LMS), also known as Cisco Prime. With the ever-increasing use of online teaching resources combined with new device policies that allow students to connect to Harker’s network with smartphones and tablets, the need for improved network management became more apparent than ever. Cisco Prime enables network managers to take a more active approach in keeping Harker’s network infrastructure up and running.
“It used to be that network administration, in terms of troubleshooting, had to respond to a report of a failure,” Hudkins explained. “Now we’re actively monitoring so that we avoid failing.”
The project was helped immensely by parent and Cisco employee Mark Basinski (Alexander, grade 7). “Thanks to Mark’s help, we were able to implement the system very efficiently,” Hudkins noted.
Cisco Prime allows Harker’s network administrators to keep track of the status of the network much more efficiently than before. It can notify tech staff, for example, when a piece of network hardware’s software is out of date and automatically install the most up-to-date version. It will also alert them when a power supply is becoming unstable.
The new LMS also offers the ability to schedule downtime for large portions of the network in order to save on energy costs. Hudkins hopes to begin this stage of the implementation sometime in the fall.
After an especially busy back-to-school time for students in grades 6-8 and their families, the middle school’s first annual barbecue afforded an opportunity for them to simply hang out.
Having fun and uniting as a group were the only things on the agenda at the Sept. 15 weekend barbecue, which came on the heels of a range of important events including the middle school orientation, preview event and parent volunteer information breakfast.
During the barbecue, which took place on the middle school campus, there were action-packed activities such as a student versus parent tug of war. Students also chose to play Nerf football, bocce ball, Ping-Pong or just hung out with friends. Meanwhile, there were plenty of hot dogs and burgers flipped on the grill and served buffet-style with tasty side dishes. Dessert was pot luck from families and included a plethora of tempting treats.
According to Jennifer Hargreaves, director of Harker’s middle and upper school volunteer programs, nearly 400 people attended the barbecue, marking a great turnout for this inauguarl event.
“This success was made possible by the grade-level coordinators involved in the planning, as well as the assistance of many parent volunteers who did the heavy lifting, grilling, serving, setting and cleanup,” she said.
This article was originally published in the fall 2012 Harker Quarterly.
Siddarth Satish ’06 certainly knows how to get extra mileage out of his graduate work. What began as a study for his master’s thesis led to his becoming a finalist in a prestigious contest, followed by the successful launch of an innovative startup company.
Last year, thanks to his graduate work on blood loss monitoring, Satish became part of the only finalist team representing Stanford University to compete in Saving Lives at Birth: A Grand Challenge for Development Partners.
The contest, sponsored by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the government of Norway, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Grand Challenges Canada and the U.K.’s Department for International Development, called for innovative solutions to save the lives of mothers and newborns around the time of birth and elicited more than 500 submissions from almost 60 countries.
Only 65 finalists, including Satish’s team, were selected to advance to the final stage of the competition, with a public vote online. Called “Lowest Mobile Platform for Real-Time Monitoring of Blood Loss,” Satish’s project was mentored under the co-advisement of Stanford University professors Michael Hsieh and Mark Gonzalgo, along with David Rempel, a professor at the University of California, San Francisco.
Although Satish and his group were not ultimately awarded grants, they attained the prestigious status of finalists and the project resulted in an innovative spin-off – Gauss Surgical Inc., a startup company he co-founded with CEO Dr. Milt McColl, a serial life sciences entrepreneur, former venture capitalist and former NFL linebacker (who won two Super Bowls with the San Francisco 49ers in the 1980s). The two co-founders, who are also entrepreneurs-in-residence at StartX, the Stanford student startup accelerator, were able to raise $1 million in seed funding last fall from several angel investors.
The health technology business uses the iPad as the base of a new method to help anesthesiologists monitor blood loss during surgery in real time, hoping to facilitate better intraoperative fluid management and more appropriate blood transfusions.
According to Satish, who serves as chief technology officer, the mobile medical platform uses the iPad to scan surgical surfaces that are covered in blood, chiefly pieces of gauze that soak up blood during surgery. Through an iPad app, those scanned images are sent to the cloud, where Gauss’ algorithms determine and deliver an estimate of how much blood is present.
Many surgical teams currently use visual estimation to determine how much blood a patient loses during procedures. However, overestimating or underestimating blood loss can contribute to patient complications, morbidity and mortality while increasing care costs.
While still under development, a final business model will likely be similar to those which hospitals are used to seeing with medical devices and software. The product will showcase at the American Society for Anesthesiologists’ and the Society for the Advancement of Blood Management’s annual meetings in the fall.
While clearly enthusiastic about his new business venture, Satish further shared some exiting news about his girlfriend, and Harker classmate, Alisha Tolani ’06. Tolani, who attended Stanford, was recently awarded a Fulbright scholarship by the Department of State and will be traveling to Honduras this fall. Similar to the USAID contest Satish had placed in, Tolani’s project involves a study of obstetrical outcomes among high- risk populations of laboring mothers in government hospitals.
“I think she’s particularly excited about putting her Spanish skills to great use after taking seven years of Spanish at Harker!” he said.
Both Satish and Tolani credit Harker’s encouragement of forward thinking with helping to pave the way for their future successes. “Although I pursued a technical path after high school, the true highlight of Harker for me was my involvement with debate,” said Satish, a former Harker debate captain.
“The skills that I developed as a debated I use every single day, both in my technical work and towards the business, as a model for thinking. I’d highly encourage students to get involved with debate, even if they are planning to pursue a technical degree in college,” he said.
This article was originally published in the fall 2012 Harker Quarterly.
Harker’s wide variety of first-rate sports programs kept student athletes busy over the summer. The camps offered students the opportunity to learn a new sport or improve their skills in a sport they had already taken up.
The one-week water polo camp, directed by Ted Ujifusa, primarily stressed fundamental skills such as movement and passing. After gaining some experience with these skills, the students were later organized into groups to play games.
Meanwhile, Harker’s summer soccer program for students in grades 5-12 proved popular with both beginners and experienced players. Students worked on various skills at a number of stations devoted to each skill, including juggling, dribbling and one-on-one matchups. “We make it fun, but we make sure that it’s not just day care, that this is a soccer camp where kids are leaving knowing that they learned something,” said Harker soccer coach and program head Shaun Tsakiris.
Over at the Oakwood Tennis Center, tennis coach Craig Pasqua ran Harker’s comprehensive summer tennis programs for grades 2-11, the Harker Summer Tennis Camp (HSTC) and the Harker-Oakwood Tennis Training System (HOTTS). HSTC taught fundamental skills for new and developing players while also introducing the rotational approach favored by most of today’s professional players. For competitive players interested in the more advanced aspects of the sport, HOTTS prepared students for in-game situations and had them play interclub matches.
Butch Keller, upper school head, ran the summer basketball camp, which sought to equip grade 4-8 boys with the skills necessary to take the next step. “It’s all about things that they can do to improve their game at their age,” Keller said. As at other camps, stations were set up to help students work on individual skills. Students also learned things they could work on at home during TV commercial breaks.
For those not focusing on any particular sport, head football coach Ron Forbes’ sports performance camp for grades 6-12 helped students improve as overall athletes. Concepts such as resistive sprinting, overspeed sprinting and core strength were taught at the camp, which Forbes said had many students in grades 6-8 due to its focus on developing athletes instead of preparing for an upcoming season. “Most of these kids now, we’re not getting them ready for the season,” he said. “We’re helping develop them into athletes at a younger age.”
This article was originally published in the fall 2012 Harker Quarterly.
Greg Martin, longtime parent at The Harker School (Araby ’11; Delaney, grade 10; Conor, grade 8) and a devoted volunteer at the annual picnic and fashion show, as well as other events, passed away Sept. 5 after a brave battle with cancer. A memorial service Sept. 9 was followed by a reception at the Martin family’s favorite restaurant, Capers.
“Everyone who worked with Greg will remember his sense of humor, zest for life and loving, caring manner,” said Chris Nikoloff, head of school.
Kelly Espinosa, picnic coordinator, worked with Martin for many years on the picnic committee. “Greg was in charge of the setup in the MPR,” said Espinosa. “He took great pride in acquiring beer for the bar that matched our picnic theme each year and puzzling out ways for us to have the most popular football games available to picnic goers. As one of two men on our female-filled committee he took our teasing in stride, kept us laughing, and was a dedicated, creative contributor to our team who will be sorely missed.”
Martin was both a logistics guru and an awesome treasurer for the fashion show, said Sue Prutton, that event’s former organizer. “He made life easy for those who depended on him; he was always committed to excellence and had abundant common sense. More than that he was just fun to be around, and that’s an invaluable commodity.” He will be missed.
This article was originally published in the fall 2012 Harker Quarterly.
Harker’s former director of global education, Bill Bost, passed away in June and his friends at Harker are joining with Bost’s dear friend, Mike Kerbyson, in holding a memorial to celebrate his life.
The memorial will be Sat., Nov. 17 at 2 p.m. in the Bucknall gym, followed by an informal gathering at Harry’s Hofbrau near the Saratoga campus, 390 Saratoga Ave. Bost’s children, Tanner and Klara, and their mother, Katrina Church, will be flying in from North Carolina.
Bost started at Harker in 1993 as a grade 4 teacher and in 2001 became director of special projects in the advancement department. A year later he took on the position of grant writer/director of international programs, which later became the global education program; Bost became director of that program in 2004. He also worked for many years as a summer program administrator. Kristin Giammona, elementary division head and long-time friend of Bost’s, said she hopes many will attend the memorial, “so Tanner and Klara can grasp how important and special Bill was to Harker and to his Harker friends.” If you have any photos you would like to include in the memorial’s slide show, please email them to Giammona at kristing@harker.org.
This article was originally published in the fall 2012 Harker Quarterly.
This summer Harker varsity and junior varsity dancers won a number of awards and earned the opportunity to perform in Hawaii and London.
The United Spirit Association Dance Camp, held in July at the University of California, Santa Cruz, featured classes on technique and choreography and also featured a number of competitive challenges. Under the guidance of upper school dance teachers Amalia De La Rosa and Karl Kuehn, the Harker dancers won several awards.
The group comprised Ria Desai, Mi- chaela Kastelman and Molly Wolfe, grade 12; Jenny Dai, grade 11; Noel Ba- nerjee, Darby Millard, Erika Olsen and Jacqui Villarreal, grade 10; and Selin Ozcelik, Emily Pan, Kristen Park, Ankita Sharma and Madison Tomihiro, grade 9.
As a group, the Harker dance group was awarded a “superior” plaque, the highest group recognition at the camp, and was invited to perform at next year’s NFL Pro Bowl in Hawaii. They also won the teamwork challenge and received an award for being the most improved team at the camp.
Kastelman, Millard and Villarreal were recognized as All-American dancers, an honor that included an invitation to perform in London with the United Spirit Association. For their overall technique and performance acumen, Kastelman, Banerjee, Millard and Villarreal all received “super sensational” ribbons. Millard and Kastelman reached the final round of competition and were among the top 10 dancers at the camp.
Desai’s and Sharma’s efforts in drill classes earned them first- place ribbons and Park and Ozcelik received second-place ribbons. In the drill competition, Sharma received a medallion for her second-place finish.
“It was really fantastic seeing the dancers take classes and participate with dance teams from all over California,” said Kuehn, noting that the students did a fantastic job representing Harker’s dance program.
“I am hoping the students walked away with a greater sense of team unity and Harker pride. This camp gave them a preview of what life is like as a professional dancer – taking classes, working on choreography and rehearsing all day long,” he said.
The junior varsity team is now working on their routine for the family picnic and the varsity troupe will be preparing for the homecoming festivities.
According to De La Rosa, a huge benefit was having members of both junior varsity and varsity participate, bringing together the whole dance department. “The dancers had an opportunity to challenge themselves both individually and as a team,” she added.
Girls Water Polo
Girls water polo went 3-0 at the Sequoia High Tournament last Saturday with wins over Notre Dame-Belmont, Aragon and Sequoia. Freshman Helena Dworak had 21 saves in goal over the three games and Keri Clifford, grade 12, scored 19 goals for the day.
Boys Water Polo
Boys water polo had an impressive victory over Santa Clara last week and take their 2-2 record to Lynbrook tomorrow. Both boys and girls teams host Cupertino Thursday.
Girls Volleyball
Girls volleyball went 5-0 Saturday to win the silver bracket at the Cupertino Tournament. The girls have improved to 10-1 on the season as they host King’s Academy tonight and Santa Clara tomorrow.
Football
Football dropped to 2-2 on the season with their loss at Mills High School Saturday. Senior JP Doherty caught two touchdown passes on offense and recovered a fumble on defense. Junior Sravan Rajathilak caught a touchdown pass for Harker’s first score of the game. Sophomore Keanu Forbes powered through the Mills defense to run for the first varsity touchdown of his career. Please support them Friday night, 6:30 at Cupertino High for the opening of league play.
Cross Country
Wish our cross country runners well this Saturday at Westmoor High.
There was something for everyone at the upper school’s recent club fair, where students perused a range of inviting offerings on display at tables staffed by volunteer recruiters.
Held in the gym during a long lunch on Sept. 12, the club fair served as a “one-stop-shop,” allowing students to sign up for a club or clubs that matched their interests. Among this year’s offerings were the Robotics Club, Japanese Club, Tri-Sports Club (fencing, ultimate Frisbee, four square), the Gay Straight Alliance and the Chemistry Club.
There were also clubs promoting community service and activism including such stalwarts as GEO (Global Empowerment and Outreach), HEART (Harker Environmental and Animal Rights Team) and the Key Club, part of an international high school organization sponsored by Kiwanis International.
According to Kerry Enzensperger, director of the upper school’s community service and activity program, “There are no club meetings until after the fair, so it’s really an official start to clubs for the new school year.”
The Harker School’s lower campus filled with the happy sounds and delicious aromas of an outdoor barbecue during two separate events held to welcome students and their families back to school.
On Aug. 24, Harker’s newest students – its kindergartners – took to the lower school’s playground for their own special, mouth-watering and fun-filled barbecue. That event was followed on Sept. 7 with a larger, combined barbecue for grades 1-5 held on Rincon Field.
At both events students and parents alike enjoyed the warm summer air and friendly atmosphere, as well as tables filled with a range of tasty barbecue offerings, veggie and regular hamburgers, the always-popular hot dogs, chips, and plenty lemonade and water. Many parents also generously brought dessert and fruit which, as one participant happily noted, went faster than the cookies!
At the grade 1-5 barbeque, while the students continued their after-school romp, parents and younger siblings lounged on blankets on the grass in the shade. Administrators, including Chris Nikoloff, head of school; Jennifer Gargano, assistant head of school for academic affairs; Ken Allen, lower school dean of students; Sara Leonard, primary division head; and Kristin Giamonna, elementary division head (Gr. 4-5) all circulated among parents to answer questions and just shoot the breeze on a beautiful, warm, sunny evening.
The barbecues are a recent innovation to welcome new and returning students and families to Harker in a casual, fun, atmosphere.