Prospective families visited the Upper School Open House on Nov. 6 to get a sneak peek at Harker student life and meet several of its faculty members. Student presentations were made by Namrata Anand, Kelsey Hilbrich, Mahum Jamal, Melinda Wang and Andrew Zhou, all Gr. 12; and Esther Belogolovsky, Rishi Bhatia and Tyler Koteskey, all Gr. 11. They spoke to the audience about student life and shared some of their memorable experiences at Harker. Families also saw a performance by the varsity Dance Troupe and toured the Saratoga campus, meeting its teachers and students while learning more about the various programs and clubs available for upper school students. Students acted as guides during the open house to help the event run more smoothly.
In November, Roslyn Li, Gr. 12, earned second place in the non-native speaking category at the 36th annual Japanese Speech Contest, held at the Japan Information Center of the Consulate General of Japan in San Francisco. Li’s speech, titled “Seeing is Believing,” detailed what she learned during her summer trip to Japan with her Japan Bowl teammates and upper school Japanese teacher Masako Onakado.
San Jose Mercury News, Sept. 30: Laurie Daniel’s column featured the new Jarvis Winery offering, “Will’s Science Project,” which was a product of alumnus Will Jarvis’ MS ’97 Harker days and his Gr. 8 project. Link
San Jose Business Journal, Oct. 2: SJBJ’s list on LEED-certified spaces included Harker’s Nichols Hall as a gold-certified building.
San Jose Mercury News, Sept. 30: The Harker football team’s 3-0 starting record, a first in its 10-year history, is recognized with mentions of Rishi Bhatia, Gautam Krishnamurthi, both Gr. 11, and Cole Davis, Gr. 12, and the team’s decision to dedicate the season to John Near. Link
San Jose Mercury News, Sept. 30: Girls Highlight Reel mentions water polo captain senior Christina Ma’s strong start with 31 goals. Link
New York Magazine, Oct. 5: Japanese retailers named designer and alumnus Alexander Wang MS ’88 the hottest international designer brand. Wang received twice as many votes as Givenchy, named as the second-hottest international designer brand. Link
PR Newswire: Eight Harker students were awarded top honors in the Junior Engineering Technology Society’s (JETS) annual TEAMS engineering competition. Competing against more than 1,200 teams from around the nation, class of 2009 graduates Hanh Dang, Daniel Kim, Tsung-Ju (Jeff) Lu, Kartik Venkatraman, Kevin Wang, Kevin Wu, Nikita Sinha and Jeff Mandell were given eight real-life theme park engineering scenarios involving design, construction and performance. In addition to individual certificates of excellence, the team was awarded a three-night stay at Walt Disney World and Harker received $5,000. Link
New York Times, Oct. 16: Designer and Harker alumnus Alexander Wang MS ’88 had a photo and mention in the Style slideshow. Link
ABC News, Aug. 19:Ramya Rangan, Gr. 10, was one of seven girls from the United States who participated in the eighth annual China Girls Math Olympiad; she brought home a bronze medal. Link
Harker’s boys water polo team has earned the Central Coast Section Interscholastic Federation 2009-10 fall season scholastic championship. The team won with an average GPA of 3.548 and was honored Nov. 21. Initiated in 1985, the program recognizes the varsity team for each sport with the highest GPA that year.
The Gr. 5 food drive successfully culminated in the delivery of nearly 300 bags of food and $3,450 to St. Justin’s Community Ministry on the morning of Nov. 20. Goods were delivered personally by students and parents, with additional assistance from Pat Walsh, Gr. 5 math teacher. The group then received a tour of the facility and learned how their donations will be used to help families in need during the holiday season.
On Nov. 18, Harker hosted a special appearance from Dr. Sridhara Dasu, a scientist with CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. Dasu is part of the team working on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a massive particle accelerator located on the French-Swiss border that is designed to recreate the conditions that existed less than a billionth of a second after the Big Bang.
Dasu began his talk by bringing the audience up to speed on the development of the field physics, summarizing the discoveries of physicists such as Albert Einstein and Werner Heisenberg. He also covered the properties and behavior of electrons, protons, photons and other particles that physicists observe. During a slideshow presentation, he explained how these different particles travel through the LHC and how the giant structure captures their movement. One goal of the LHC, he said, was to confirm the existence of a particle known as the Higgs boson, which could help explain the origins of mass in the universe.
One of Dasu’s graduate students, Kyle Knoepfel, also spoke about his work at the Stanford Linear Accelerator (SLAC). Though not nearly as large as the LHC, Knoepfel said, the SLAC can still offer indirect assistance to the scientists at CERN, by informing them what not to look for.
Over the summer, a team of young entrepreneurs led by Michaela Kastelman, Gr. 9, won the Camp Bizsmart competition, sponsored by companies such as Cisco, Better World Books, Revolution Foods and Hara. Kastelman was one of three Harker students in the group, along with fellow freshman Michael Cheng and Sachin Vadodaria,Gr. 8.The team designed an application for the Apple iPhone that tracks energy usage. In September, the team presented its idea to the CEO of Hara, a company that develops Web-based software deployed by businesses to track the use of resources and reduce emissions.
Freshmen Sarina Vij and Piyush Prasad also participated on a team of their own, presenting a business plan to energy supplement seller FRS. Their plan to market the company’s Healthy Energy Line to the teenage demographic was voted “most likely to go to market” by a panel of judges. FRS president and chief executive officer Maigread Eichten said the team’s business plan was better than the one proposed by a group of MBA students who were tasked with creating a similar proposal.
On Nov. 18, the members of the winning team were honored at the finals of the Newpreneur of the Year competition, held in San Francisco. During the event, influential businessman and best-selling author Tom Peters took the time to talk to the young entrepreneurs and pose for a photo. One attendee remarked that the students speaking with Peters “is like young musicians talking with Paul McCartney. Nothing beats meeting a living legend.”
Harker students received high honors in late October, placing in the top three on various academic tests and in the Open Certamen of Ludi Octobres, Junior Classical League’s fall mini-convention. These games are a preliminary to the California JCL convention that will be held in Irvine in April.
For level four and above, April Luo, Gr. 11, placed first in Latin Derivatives and third in Pentathlon; Anjali Menon, Gr. 12, first in Mottoes, Quotations and Abbreviations and second in Latin Reading Comprehension; Jessica Lin, Gr. 10, first in Roman Daily Life; Brandon Araki, Gr. 12, first in Latin Vocabulary and first in Latin Reading Comprehension; Alexander Hsu, Gr. 10, second in Latin Grammar; Prag Batra, Gr. 10, third in Mottoes, Quotations and Abbreviations, first in Myth Spelling Bee, and second in Latin Derivatives; Phillip Oung, Gr. 10, first in Mythology.
For level three, Richard Fan, received first in Roman Daily Life and first in Mythology; Suchita Nety, second in Mottoes, Quotations and Abbreviations and third in Pentathlon; Sean Fernandes, second in Roman Daily Life and third in Mythology; Anuj Sharma, first in Mottoes, Quotations and Abbreviations and third in Latin Grammar; Shannon Su, second in Latin Derivatives; Michael Cheng, third in Latin Grammar and first in Latin Vocabulary; Jenny Chen, third in Latin Reading Comprehension. All of these students are Gr. 9.
In Open Certamen, a quiz bowl game, Harker students were split into different teams with students from other schools and Araki and Menon’s team placed second. Ramya Rangan, Gr. 10 and Nety were also recognized, placing third and first respectively.
At the middle school level one, Sadhika Malladi, Gr. 6, placed third in Reading Comprehension. At the middle school advanced level, Anni Ankola, Gr. 7, placed second in Mythology; Oishi Banerjee, Gr. 8, first in Mottoes, Quotes and Abbreviations and second in Reading Comprehension; Aadyot Bhatnagar, Gr. 7, first in Vocabulary and first in Reading Comprehension; Kevin Duraiswamy, Gr. 8, first in Reading Comprehension and second in Mottoes, Quotes and Abbreviations. In Open Certamen, Banerjee’s team placed first and Bhatnagar’s placed third.
Additionally, Ankola, Vivek Sriram, Ryan Pachauri and Billy Bloomquist, all Gr. 7, placed third in the impromptu art competition.
Harker was visited by several colleges in late October and early November to give students a look at life at the universities they were interested in attending. Universities such as MIT, Georgetown, Yale, Duke and Northwestern sent representatives to speak to students and answer any questions they had about college life or the admissions process.
Harker’s middle school is putting up six robotics teams this year, five of which entered competitions in the last few weeks. The teams, ranging from three to five competitors, are coached by middle school teacher Michael Schmidt.
The first two teams to compete placed sixth and seventh out of 24 and one of them received the award for most well-rounded team in addition to an invitation to compete in the second of three rounds. On Nov.14 three additional teams competed, placing fifth, 10th and 12th with overall scores that were even higher than the first group’s. Both the fifth- and 10th-place teams advanced to the next round and the 10th-place team was awarded first place for teamwork.
These students have shown a very high level of commitment given that practices and competitions are on Saturdays. We hope to hear more from these teams as the next round of competitions is Dec. 19 and the championship will be held on Jan 16. Good luck, robotics teams!