Anand Natarajan, Gr. 12, recently won an individual silver medal and helped his team take the silver prize at the sixth International Olympiad in Linguistics (IOL) in Sunny Beach, Bulgaria in early August.
Natarajan was included in one of two teams representing the United States at the event. He was the only Harker student to make U.S. Team 1, taking fourth place in the North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad (NACLO), out of an original pool of nearly 800 participants. He is also a member of Harker’s World Language Club, in which students solve linguistic problems all year-round.
In addition to the U.S., 15 other teams from 10 countries took part in the IOL, including Bulgaria, Germany, Estonia, South Korea, Latvia, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Slovenia and Sweden.
Geared specifically to high-school students, IOL contestants solve problems related to a wide variety of languages. This year’s contest had students solve problems dealing with Micmac (spoken by Native Americans in Canada), Old Norse, New Caledonia’s Drehu and Cemi languages, southern Mexico’s Copainala Zoque, and Inuktikut (the language of the Canadian Inuit people). A final team exercise dealt with various Chinese dialects. For this contest, students used the same skills utilized by linguistics researchers and scholars.
Awards were given for the best solutions to a single problem, the highest total of the combined scores to each solution, and to the team scoring the most points in the contest. Natarajan received a silver medal for the total accumulation of his scores, and his team’s total score netted them a silver award.
In addition to winning gold, silver and bronze medals in the team and individual contests, the U.S. also received the highest cumulative score. The U.S. won 11 of the 33 awards given at the Olympiad, including two gold medals.
‘Long-time Harker teacher John Near was honored Aug. 20 at the school’s opening faculty dinner, where he was told the top history department award would be named for him and that he had received a prestigious service award.
Donna Gilbert, history and social science department chair, said, “The history department, to honor John Near and his lifelong passion for history and politics, his unparalleled devotion to his students, and the lasting impact that he has had on so many Harker students for 30-plus years, will now call our senior award the John Near Excellence in History Award. This is the top award given out each May to one deserving senior. The award will thusforth read: The senior who has earned the John Near Excellence in History award is one who embodies those remarkable qualities of John Near: a love of learning and an abiding passion for the drama and mystery of the human story.”
Near was further honored with the annual Harker Alumni Association’s Phyllis Carley Award, given each spring to an individual who has devoted time and energy, and made significant contributions, towards advancing The Harker School’s programs.
“The Phyllis Carley Service Award is meant to honor outstanding service to the school, and I can think of no worthier recipient than John Near,” said Head of School Chris Nikoloff. “John is a teacher’s teacher who puts students and education first. His service to the school flows from his unswerving commitment to excellence in history education and his uncanny ability to hook students onto the subject of history.”
Christina Yan ’93, spoke movingly on how being treated like an adult by Near made a such a difference in her life. “That was the magic of being in your classroom. You accepted our adolescence, and used that understanding to help us see more of the world in its contexts and complications. Life is never one-sided; history is always a matter of perspective. You respected our desire to be treated as adults and you taught us how to engage in the adult world by entertaining all matter of questions with a tone of seriousness. You never let us feel that you’d dumbed something down for us, and you allowed us to partake in your wry and dry humor.
“For myself, I thank you for helping me find appreciation and understanding for all the complexities of human social interaction – be they between friends or nations. Thank you for teaching me to reflect and see myself for who I actually am, and be proud. And on behalf of all of your students over the years, thank you for your dedication to helping the teenage mind and heart grow in so many ways.”
Fellow history teacher Ramsay Westgate attended the dinner and said, “John is someone for whom my respect and admiration professionally and personally knows no bounds. It was an honor and a privilege to be in attendance and to be able to celebrate how much John means to our community. The opportunity to work with him and get to know him the past five years has been invaluable and something that I treasure. ”
Related Stories
Open House Becomes Alumni Event
Update: Relay for Life Brings Cheer
This summer, students from various South Bay schools attended the Harker Forensics Institute (HFI), a special debate camp for students preparing for fall debate competitions.
“HFI is a two-week intensive study course where students self-select a debate area to work in,” said Carol Green, US debate teacher. “They came from throughout the region as this was the first year HFI had been opened to the Silicon Valley community.”
Students ranged from eighth graders to incoming seniors and from novice to varsity in experience levels. They received top-level instruction from some of the best coaches in the nation and region. The coaching staff included Green and fellow US debate teacher Steve Clemmons, as well Doug Dennis from Saint Francis High School in Mountain View, Paul Pinza from Westmont High School in Campbell and Sean Mumper from Presentation High School in San Jose.
The HFI also received help from 2009 graduates Raghav Aggarwal, Kaavya Gowda and Pratusha Erraballi, who served as assistant teachers in their respective fields and led lectures and lab sessions during the two weeks.
There were 41 students enrolled in the program divided among four events: Public Forum, Congressional Debate, Policy and Lincoln-Douglas.
“HFI gives students an extra edge during the competitive season because it allows them to focus for two weeks on their debate event,” Green said. “From specialized lectures to personalized feedback and coaching, students get the opportunity to try out different techniques in research and delivery that they may not get during the school year.”
However, HFI is also an opportunity for students to explore speech and debate even if they don’t plan to compete. “A number of students don’t have time during the school year to take a speech class but want to learn the research methods and argumentation techniques that forensics teaches,” said Green. Additionally, this allows students who may have communication apprehension the opportunity to explore public speaking in a more nurturing environment.
Because forensics is a collaborative event and one that is strengthened by the level of competition, it is important for students to get as many opportunities to improve themselves and their peers. “At HFI, we made sure our focus was practicum and education,” Green noted. While other forensics institutes spend a fair amount of time with the instructors watching the students do research and write cases, HFI is structured for students to take that work home with them and to do more hands-on learning in the classroom. Students brought their research and cases each day for critiques and feedback, but the goal was to keep the students learning throughout the eight-hour days.
“One of the reasons to open up HFI to the outside community was the hope of creating a larger sense of local community,” Green said. “There are a number of forensics institutes in the country, but very few are operated by high schools and for high schools.” By keeping numbers small and focusing on local students, the HFI organizers hoped to provide a camp that costs less than the for-profit institutes that exist while offering students a highly educational forensics experience.
This year, HFI had students from Harker, Presentation, St. Francis, Lynbrook, Saratoga and Palo Alto high schools. “While we hope to open up a few more spaces next year, our goal will still be to offer a personalized experience that prepares students for the competitive year but also for life,” Green said.
Alumnus Will Jarvis’ Harker-nurtured wine has won a gold medal in the Beverage Testing Institute 2009 World Wine Championships for his Cabernet Franc, “Will Jarvis’ Science Project 2007.” Jarvis developed the prototype for his wine in a science experiment in Gr. 8 while at Harker.” Read the full story of Jarvis’ experiment and development of the wine! “We didn’t know what to expect when we tried Will’s original Science Project blend a few years ago,” said Will’s father William Jarvis, president of JARVIS. “The outcome was sensational, though, and our winemaker, Dimitri Tchelistcheff, agreed. So it was from Will’s original experiment that this new wine was born.” The wine, which earned the Gold Medal & Cellar Selection awards Aug. 19, is one of four JARVIS wins at the tasting. Several of the wines, including “Science Project,” have been prizes for Harker fundraisers.
Students in Gr. 1-8 who wanted to “zoom” through a theme- and project-based class this summer attended a variety of two-week classes at the Bucknall campus.
In Gr. 1-4, students attended thematic, hands-on academic classes until noon each day for two weeks, and then moved to afternoon groups where they participated in traditional summer camp activities including archery, swimming and dance. Older students, Gr. 5-8, remained in their themed academic classes until 3:30 each day, with recreation periods included in their day.
For the younger campers, the theme of summer guided their activities, which included different topics each session. For the Gr. 3-4 students, Session A focused on bugs, so students spent time investigating live bugs, performing the story “The Grouchy Ladybug” and making homemade lemonade and popcorn. These students took a walking field trip to Dolphin Pet Village, where they got to touch some of the animals, including a snake!
During Session B, Gr. 3-4 students could be found constructing mini-skateboard parks, marble raceways and amusement parks, and surveying students on their favorite crackers. According to Kathleen Ferretti, Gr. 3 math and language arts teacher, “Of the choices of Saltines, Ritz and Goldfish, the winner was Ritz by an overwhelming majority!” Students during this session also took a walking field trip to U.S. Bank, which included a walk through the vault and seeing the inside of the ATM.
In the third session, third and fourth graders constructed artistic models of sea stars and sea anemones, made imaginative sea creature pictures and under the sea dioramas sparkling with glitter, shells, fish, seaweed and sand. They also made scientific fish models from play dough. This group’s walking trip was to Nob Hill grocery store including the produce section, where students toured the freezer, kept at -5 to 5 degrees F, the shipping area, the meat department, and the deli. Afterward, the class enjoyed trays of cookies, salami and cheese as well as goodie bags.
Campers in Gr. 5-8 had a variety of choices for their project-based classes, including a Crime Scene Investigation class, the journalism option of Camp Chronicle, Debate, Art, Rockets and Robotics. The latter class, which was new this summer, had one of the largest enrollments of the Zoom courses.
Michael Schmidt, middle school computer science teacher, instructed the robotics course, and thoroughly enjoyed himself. “With four meetings per day, we could go from concept to building to programming to testing in just one day,” said Schmidt. The kids made robots that they could control with their own handmade remote controls. They made robots that played music, avoided obstacles and raced along a line the fastest to the finish. On the final day, the students displayed their robots to their parents and showed them their programs. “I personally was amazed with how much we covered in just two weeks,” he added. “But the kids took everything I offered them and ran with it. They were amazing!”
Let teens read what they like and they will like to read. The tenet of reading evangelists was in evidence Aug. 28 as US students and faculty spent an hour avidly chatting about their summer reads. Launched last spring by US librarians Sue Smith and Lauri Vaughan, the ReCreate Reading program sought to emphasize reading for pleasure and allowed students completely free choice in their selection of a title. To help build enthusiasm for ReCreate Reading, Smith and Vaughan leveraged the US faculty’s passion for books to encourage students. Teachers were asked to sponsor a particular title or be willing to facilitate a discussion group in which all students came prepared to talk about a different book. The latter, referred to as the catch-all option, permitted students to preserve their choice of a book to something that struck their fancy sometime during the summer break.
Students in Gr. 10-12 were given the option to select from over 35 teacher-sponsored titles or participate in the catch-all option. Freshmen were asked to read a title of their choice which they discussed with their advisories. Teacher-sponsored titles ranged from fun reads such as Stephenie Meyer’s “Twilight” series led by ButchKeller and Jane Keller, US head and math teacher, respectively, to discussions on Fareed Zakaria’s“The Post-American World”facilitated by history teacher Ramsay Westgate and “Godel’s Proof” by Ernest Nagel and facilitated by math teacher Misael Fisico.
A highlight of the day was a visit by Matt Richtel, author of the psychological thriller “Hooked.” Sponsored by psychology teacher Naomi Schatz, the title drew the interest of over three dozen students and several faculty members who enjoyed an hour-long discussion with the Bay Area author in the Nichols auditorium.
“ReCreate Reading was a resounding success!” said Vaughan. “Folks tend to think of reading as an individual pursuit, but in many ways it’s very social. Anyone who’s read a great book loves to share it – in fact that’s how most of us figure out what we’ll read next. Not only did ReCreate Reading provide enthusiastic readers with a convenient outlet, many of them have a list of books they want to read next.”
Other titles discussed included non-fiction books such as “The Tao of Pooh”by Benjamin Hoff, “The Endurance” by Alfred Lansing, “Between a Rock and a Hard Place”by Aron Ralston, “Bringing Down the House”by Ben Mezrich and two Michael Pollan titles, “The Omnivore’s Dilemma”and “In Defense of Food.” Fiction ranged from poetry (“The Autobiography of Red” by Anne Carson) to science fiction (” The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” by Douglas Adams and “Anathem”by Neal Stephenson) to realistic fiction (“Nineteen Minutes” by Jodi Picoult) to historical fiction (“The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing”) by M.T. Anderson.
Victor Chen and Vishesh Jain, both Gr. 12, were just two of the many students keeping busy with internships this summer. Both, along with fellow senior Navin Sabharwal and Tiphane Delapine, Gr. 9, were interns at Hunter Laboratories in Campbell, which is owned by Harker parents Chris and Marcia Riedel (Randall, Gr. 9, and Hunter, Gr. 6). “I chose to do this internship because it offered me a great opportunity to work in an actual clinical laboratory setting,” Chen said. “I was able to gain insight into the routines, rules and regulations of the lab workplace, and the project that I chose has a significant and direct impact on patients’ health.”
While at Hunter Chen spent most of his time working on his own research project. “My project focused on human papillomavirus (HPV) and the effectiveness of a new test, based on messenger RNA, as a screening method for HPV infection and cervical cancer,” he said. His duties included assisting with the tests and analyzing the results.
Jain chose to do an internship at Hunter Labs “because it offered both a chance to experience science and research in the corporate realm and an opportunity to write a research article for a scholarly journal,” he said. “Further, the actual parameters and final destination of the internship were rather vague at first, but I enjoyed that flexibility and the choices it gave me throughout the summer.”
During the internship, Jain was given the responsibility of running a variety of calculations on the “enormous data collection of various cardiovascular tests and questions for over 3,000 patients,” he said. “I was given this data bank to sort and run a myriad of calculations with, from creating histograms for the tests, age and risk factors to revealing the prevalence of hidden risk markers in the population.”
Using his findings, Jain began writing an article “which involved additional calculations, research into other publications and preparation of a manuscript for review,” he said. He hopes that the article will be published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Jain said his favorite part of the internship was participating in meetings with Hunter Laboratories executives, which often included people from other companies. “These meetings both allowed me to practice presenting scientific material in an intelligible manner and gave me a glimpse into the real mechanisms and relationships in the corporate world,” he said.
Chen enjoyed the opportunity to work in the lab, “not just doing number crunching. I was very pleased that I could research with actual patient samples and have access to various high-tech equipment.”
One of several Harker students undertaking internships over the summer, Namrata Anand, Gr. 12, spent hers studying astronomy at UC Santa Cruz.
“I have always been interested in physics and engineering, but never truly realized the immense scale that physics extends to: the universe!” Anand said of her reasons to arrange the internship. “As a kid, I always wanted to be an astronaut, so when I noticed that Harker was offering an astrophysics internship, I leapt at the chance to virtually explore our sister galaxy, Andromeda.”
Anand, who was joined at UC Santa Cruz by fellow seniors Andrew Zhou and Kevin Zhang, studied the chemical makeup of the galaxy Andromeda. UCSC researchers, professors and students “have collected data over the past several years and I was given access to this data for my project,” Anand said. “I looked mainly at chemical spectra to detect the changing amounts of chemicals in stars and the appearance of different chemicals in various Andromeda star populations.”
The environment at UCSC was one of Anand’s favorite parts of the internship. “My professor and the college students were helpful, fun and encouraging. I was not expecting my internship experience to be so casual,” said Anand, who noted that much of what she learned was a result of the casual conversations she had with her mentors and fellow Harker students.
“This internship has not only piqued my interest in astrophysics but has given me a glimpse into what college will be like next year!” she said.
Senior Alex Han spent his summer as an intern at Stanford University’s Clark Center, where he studied bioengineering.
Growing up with eczema, asthma and allergies to various foods, Han became interested in immunology, and believed the internship would provide him with the access and tools to explore the field further.
“I thought that the research lab’s focus on both understanding the mechanisms of diseases such as cancer as well as testing drugs and gene therapy would give me a firsthand experience with immunological research,” Han said. “The lab also works closely with Stanford’s medical clinics, and … I felt that it would be a great opportunity to work with the researchers who are at the forefront of developing and improving medical treatments for children afflicted with cancer and other life-threatening diseases.”
Han chose to do a research project at the Clark Center “in order to give myself the most consummate understanding of the research process and the greatest freedom with designing my own methods and ideas,” he said.
Although at first somewhat daunted by the task, Han went ahead with his plan to find out if the drug celastrol could induce heme oxygenase-1. “Because heme oxygenase-1 has been shown to promote wound healing and protect against various cellular stresses such as heat and oxidative shock, induction of the gene would demonstrate celastrol’s tremendous potential as a clinical treatment,” Han said.
In addition to learning more about his preferred field of study, Han also relished the chance to work in a top-flight laboratory, as well as meet and work with researchers from many disciplines. “Conducting biological research in a wet lab for the first time was a tremendous experience in of itself,” he said. “But being surrounded by such intelligent and enthusiastic researchers and having some of the most advanced resources in the field available for use made the internship truly memorable.”
On Aug. 25 over 350 students, parents, alumni and faculty gathered for the official ribbon-cutting ceremony of the science and technology building, Nichols Hall.
Preceding the ribbon-cutting, science teachers shared their favorite aspects of the building including the new collaborative space, robotics room, special projects room and, in the atrium, a large-screen monitor displaying energy savings from the solar array on the green roof.
Anita Chetty, US science department chair, noted, “As Harker teachers, we get to play everyday. We get to think. We get to create. And now in this incredible facility, we get to do it as anyone would dream of doing.”
Lon Allan, chairman of Harker’s Board of Trustees, recognized the contributions of lifetime trustees Howard and Diana Nichols for their “extraordinary vision, dedication and leadership at The Harker School for more than four decades,” by announcing the Board’s unanimous decision to name the new building Nichols Hall.
MS history teacher Patricia White admired the building, pointing out the beautiful aesthetics. “I think we really needed the space for students and this brings us up to being a world-class prep school,” White said. She thinks that the LEED certification will “put us on the map as a very progressive school. We’re known for our science. We’re known for our math…We are putting our priorities in the right order and we are actually fulfilling what we preach.”
After the Nichols’ cut the ribbon, attendees poured into the new building, exploring the new classrooms and teaching space. “I wish I was a high school student right now,” Anshu Das ’05 said, shaking his head in disbelief as he looked at the Foucault pendulum in the rotunda. “I think it is starting to set a standard. Any building made from here on out only has to be better than the last.” Neil Shah ’08 added, “I have never seen anything of such caliber. It certainly changes the way you look not only at this campus, but of course at science and technology.”
Howard Nichols addressed the guests and discussed the 20-year planning process and the hard work of all who were involved in the project. “Our vision has always been to build the best school in the world,” he said. “I don’t know if anyone can claim that distinction but we certainly know we are one of the best, and we are only going to get better.” Diana Nichols added, “It pleases me to think that, in this building, the next generation of scientists will start forming ideas that will fuel the future.