Student Ramya Rangan, grade 12, will head off to Barcelona on Oct. 12 to present at the DREAM6 (Dialogue for Reverse Engineering Assessments and Methods) conference. Rangan will present her research project, titled “Splice Site Discovery Using RNA-Seq Data,” which she completed during a summer stint with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Computational Biology group. She will be the only high school student presenting at the conference.
“I’m excited to have the opportunity to practice talking at a real research conference!” Rangan exclaimed. “I’m also excited about being able to share my research with a group of people that can discuss their ideas with me.” She is hopeful that the researchers at the conference, who have performed similar research, will be able to offer help with her future research endeavors.
Grade 1 students and their families were treated to a special movie night in late September at the lower school gym, where they watched three episodes of the popular animated series, “Wallace and Gromit.” The children sat on blankets munching pizza, cookies and of course popcorn, while their parents met and chatted with one another.
The second speaker for this season of the Harker Speaker Series will be Dr. Jill Tarter, director of the Center for Search for Extraterrestrial Institute (SETI) Research at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif. Tarter will appear on Oct. 14 at 7 p.m., at Nichols Hall on the upper school campus, and will give a talk titled, “Citizen Science and the Search for ET.”
A distinguished graduate of Cornell University with a degree in engineering physics, Tarter received her master’s degree and Ph.D. in astronomy from the University of California, Berkeley. Much of her work in the search for extraterrestrial life helped inspire Jodie Foster’s character in the 1997 film “Contact.”
Tarter later went to work for NASA’s SETI program, and worked as a project scientist on the High Resolution Microwave Survey. She continued her work searching for extraterrestrial life after the NASA SETI program ended in 1993, working to build funding from private sources so that the research could continue.
Today, Tarter is a member of the management board for the Allen Telescope Array. This joint project between SETI and U.C. Berkeley’s Radio Astronomy Laboratory will search the radio universe for astrophysical emissions and greatly expedite the search for radio emissions from distant technologies.
A well-known figure in the scientific community, Tarter has earned the Lifetime Achievement Award from Women in Aerospace, two public service medals from NASA, the Chabot Observatory’s Person of the Year Award and more. In 2002, she became an American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellow, and was named one of the most influential people in the world by Time magazine in 2004.
In addition to her scientific research, Tarter has also been involved in several key educational projects, including the “Life in the Universe” series for grades 3-9 and “Voyages through Time,” a high school science series focusing on the theme of evolution.
Arjun Subramaniam, grade 7, and Andrea Wang ’10 both made it to the final rounds in two singing contests similar to American Idol, winning awards for their talent.
Subramaniam was awarded the Star Kid trophy, which recognizes rising talent, by Carnatic Music Idol USA.
Carnatic Music Idol is a popular TV program in India that is coming to the United States for the first time. Similar to American Idol, Carnatic Music Idol recruits talent from across the country, and came to the Bay Area as part of its first U.S. auditions process. Subramaniam was one of 20 competing in the “juniors” category in the show’s finals.
Subramaniam sings with Harmonics at Harker, a by-audition show choir for students in grades 7-8.
On ETTV Top Idol 2011, a Chinese spin-off of American Idol, Wang was chosen as the top performer and made it to the top 10. Going into the semifinals, Wang had the highest score.
Like American Idol, ETTV Top Idol is an annual competition that launches a countrywide search to discover the “potential pop stars of tomorrow.” This year, ETTV Top Idol auditions were held in Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York. Wang auditioned at a friend’s suggestion and has had much success in the competition. It is easy to see why from this video of Wang singing Bonnie Raitt’s “Have a Heart.”
The final round of the competition took place in Los Angeles in mid-September but results are not available.
Jeffrey Kwong, grade 12, has been accepted to the National High School Honors Orchestra as a cellist. Kwong will be the first Harker student represented in the orchestra, and in late March, will join nearly 100 other musicians from across the United States for a performance at the National Orchestra Festival in Atlanta.
Kwong has been involved in Harker’s music program since grade 6, and is also a Conservatory Certificate candidate. Orchestra director Chris Florio said, “Jeffrey has been a tremendous player in our orchestra program for the last seven years. He placed first last year in a state competition run by ASTA (America String Teachers Association) and is a member of the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra along with five other Harker students.”
In late September, 81 upper school students came together at the Honors and Ethics Conference to discuss difficult situations that can occur on campus. Each advisory sent one student volunteer (and one advisory sent two students). Once they arrived, students were split into groups of eight, with two students from each grade level. The students sat at round tables with a moderator and listened as Evan Barth, the dean of upper school students, told them that the situations they were about to presented with were realistic, but were not real.
The students then heard three different case studies: one about two students talking between periods about a test they’d taken, and having a third student approach who had not yet taken the test; another concerning a plagiarism case with an outside confrontation; and finally, a property issues case.
The tables the students sat at were not unlike the Honor Council, a group of three faculty and 10 students whose mission is to uphold the school’s honor code. All the case studies were designed to create the same gray areas the Honor Council must discuss, and inspire conversations that were, Barth says, “entirely organic. The adults involved in the conference had to keep their agendas out of it.”
The initial inspiration for the conference came from a business ethics conference Barth attended in Arizona. Eventually, he’d like to involve other schools besides Harker in the conference so students can discuss the similarities and differences between what they face on campus, and how they’re dealing with those issues.
After the students finished discussing their three case studies, they had 15 minutes of silent reflection, and then a chance to share those reflections with the group. Barth recalls one student in particular who said that even though some cases started out seeming very black-and-white, there ended up being many gray areas, and all those areas needed to be discussed and analyzed.
“The more people talk about these things,” Barth said, “the more the level of overall integrity, both on campus and in life, has to go up. People get very excited and into that feeling of wanting to make changes while they’re at a conference, but then they leave and go back to the grind or back to their homework and that fades. The goal is to take a couple of those moments when you felt that buzz and implement them in day-to-day life.”
Harker performing arts students have two exciting opportunities coming up this month. On Oct. 21, students will attend a Broadway casting workshop, where they will learn about the process of casting a Broadway production, and also have their work evaluated by Broadway casting director Rachel Hoffman. That weekend, on Oct. 23, Harker students will work as interns for the west coast casting call for the Broadway revival of “Annie,” which will be held at the middle school campus.
Volleyball: The girls volleyball team continues to pace the league, earning two more victories last week: one over Pinewood, and a five-set thriller over Crystal Springs. The girls are currently 12-4 overall, and 4-0 in league play. They have been led by seniors Aura Dave and Alisha Mayor.
Water Polo: All Harker water polo teams defeated Cupertino in late September. Karan Das-Grande led the boys with four goals, and Jason Yu was outstanding in goal, leading to a 12-7 victory. The girls were 15-2 winners and have improved to 6-6 overall. Keri Clifford led the attack with six goals and Sierra Lincoln was again strong in goal.
Tennis: The Harker girls tennis team suffered their first defeat of the season against perennial state power Menlo to drop to 6-1 on the season. Number one singles player Jenny Chen, grade 11, crushed last year’s league MVP 6-1, 6-2.
Cross Country: Cross country had their first league meet Thursday. The boys placed fourth, with freshman Corey Gonzales taking fifth overall. Tyler Yeats, grade 11, came in second for Harker and placed 14th overall. For the girls, Ragini Bhattacharya, grade 11, placed ninth overall.
Football: Football had a rough welcome into the new league, losing to a hungry Gunn High School team 47-6. The lone Harker touchdown came on junior Spenser Quash’s pass to Robert Deng, also grade 11.
September Athletes of the Month are Daanish Jamal, grade 12, for football and Keri Clifford, grade 11, for water polo.
This article originally appeared in the fall 2011 Harker Quarterly
Good morning. I’d like to welcome the Board of Trustees, administration, faculty and staff, and the classes of 2015, 2014, 2013 and 2012 to the Matriculation Ceremony. For those of you who are new to the school, and some of you who are not new, my name is Christopher Nikoloff, head of school at Harker. I oversee operations on all three campuses, but my office is located on this campus, where I really enjoy getting to know you. Please say hello when we see each other in the hallways, and feel free to stop by my office for cookies anytime. It is better for me if you eat them – otherwise, I will!
I am honored to have the opportunity to open the new academic year with this Matriculation address. Also, I am sure you will be relieved to hear that I am continuing the tradition of brevity, confining my talk to one page of single-spaced, size-twelve font. So far I have received no complaints about this tradition.
As many of you know, this year The Harker School will be up for re-accreditation by its member organizations, the California Association of Independent Schools and the Western Association of Schools and Colleges. For those of you who love acronyms, these organizations are known as CAIS and WASC. Joining these organizations creates a pool of professionals who can share resources and promote standards and growth.
Our full six-year term of accreditation expires this year, which is the reason for the re-accreditation. The entire school community participated in a self-study last year, the results of which are shared with the visiting accreditation committee. Some of your fellow students participated in that self-study. My committee, which focused on the school’s mission and philosophy, enjoyed invaluable contributions from two students, for instance. As you know, our mission and philosophy statements emphasize love of learning, kindness, well-roundedness and community. The Matriculation Ceremony today is about committing ourselves to these values.
The accreditation team will take a good look at our mission statement. Some of you may have noticed that this statement is inside every classroom. Please nudge your teacher if his or her classroom is missing one. Tell them that I sent you. One of the critical areas the visiting committee assesses is whether or not we do what we say we do in our mission and philosophy statements. If they grant a full six-year term they are essentially saying three things: we have a sound mission, we do what we say we do in the mission, and we can monitor our own growth as a community.
Our mission and philosophy statements look very much like other independent schools, so we do not anticipate many surprises there. The essence of any school is how it lives up to its mission. Schools are like thumb prints: each different, each special. I believe that we live up to our mission in unique ways. I also believe that the life of our mission is in the often small, unheralded actions that together create the delicate and unmistakable ecosystem we call Harker.
When a student picks up a piece of trash that is not his or holds a door for a stranger, then we are living up to our mission. When students are inspired to help those who are less fortunate, we are living up to our mission. When students choose not to bully or tease, or stand up against bullying or teasing, then our mission is alive and well. When students choose academic integrity, hard work and good cheer, then we are living up to our mission. When students push themselves to learn and grow, then we are reflecting our mission. When students choose cooperation over competition, then we are living our mission. When students tell me that their favorite class is also their most difficult, then I see a sign of our mission.
Accreditation is a lot like the movie ‘The Wizard of Oz.” If you remember the movie, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, the Lion and Dorothy all look for the Wizard of Oz to find for themselves, respectively, a brain, a heart, courage and a way home. Well, we learn throughout the movie that the Scarecrow has smarts, the Tin Man has heart, the Lion courage and Dorothy a way home all along. None of them need the Wizard for any of these things. Sure, he can give them a piece of paper, but that paper could not bestow on them what they already have. Similarly, if our mission is alive and well, accreditation cannot give us what we already have.
Visitors to the Harker campus usually say that the students are the most impressive, engaging part of their visit. The faculty and staff say that the students are the best part of their day. I believe that is because of the little things you do every day for their own sake, not for some result, that reflect the spirit of our mission statement. The values of love of learning, kindness, well-roundedness and community are alive and well because of the work you, the faculty and staff do each day.
On behalf of the Board of Trustees and the administration, I wish you a great year living up to the spirit of our mission. Thank you.
Distinguished Yale professors Meg Urry and Mark Saltzman appeared at Harker’s upper school campus on Sept. 25 for a special science symposium arranged for students interested in pursuing science in college. Harker’s impressive science background made Nichols Hall an ideal venue for the event. Both professors spoke to the audience about their areas of research at Yale. Saltzman, chair of the department of biomedical engineering, discussed improving methods of medical drug delivery, and Urry, chair of the department of physics, talked about her research of black holes.