Congratulations to the “Talon” yearbook staff, whose work is featured in the Jostens “Gotcha Covered Look Book,” which recognizes top-flight yearbooks from schools around the country. In the book, alumna Emily Chow ’08 receives an Honorable Mention for one of her photos in the 2007-08 edition of the “Talon.” It is also featured in the book’s cover gallery.
Three students have qualified for the United States Chemistry Olympiad in late April. Andrew Zhou, Gr. 11, scored 58 points out of 60 on a March 27 exam to earn a spot, while Kevin Xu, Gr. 12, scored 57. Because he moved beyond the national round in last year’s competition, Vikram Nathan, Gr. 12, will also compete for Harker, even though each school is typically allowed to enter only two students.
Tags: Featured Story, topacademics, topscienceRepresenting Harker at the National Debate Coaches Association Tournament the weekend of April 11 were Kaavya Gowda, Gr. 12, Kelsey Hilbrich, Gr. 11, sophomores Appu Bhaskar, Benjamin Chen and Ziad Jawadi; and freshman Akshay Jagadeesh.
The California State Tournament took place the weekend of April 18, with David Kastelman, Gr. 12 and Michael Tsai, Gr. 10, being the first Harker students to qualify in Student Congressional debate. Results of the tournaments were not available at Harker News press time.
It is also a record-breaking year for Harker qualifiers to the Tournament of Champions (TOC), where students compete all year to earn qualifying legs. Harker has a fully-qualified policy team for the first time in several years, two public forum teams who automatically qualified based on last year’s successful run, Harker’s first ever double sophomore team to qualify to the TOC and its ver y first freshman qualifier to the TOC. “To qualify as an underclassman is almost unheard of, let alone in your first year!” said US debate teacher Carol Green. Representing Harker as the largest delegation ever to attend from the school at the 2009 TOC will be seniors Mohit Bansal, Raghav Aggarwal and Gowda; juniors Kelsey Hilbrich, Arjun Mody, Adam Perelman and Christopher Eckardt; sophomores Justine Liu and James Seifert and freshman Sonya Chalaka.
Harker attended the Grand National qualifier in Januar y. Attending this tournament over Memorial Day weekend will be juniors Perelman, Mody, Hilbrich and David Mihai; sophomores Liu, Seifer t, Tsai, Hassaan Ebrahim, Christine Chien and Aileen Wen; and freshman Jagadeesh.
Finally, after going undefeated at the National Forensic League qualifier, the oldest national debate tournament, where they placed seventh in the nation last year, Gowda and Hilbrich will travel to Alabama in June to compete for a week at the final tournament of the 2008-09 season.
Harker’s Global Empowerment Organization (GEO) wound up a week-long program to raise awareness of global primary education in mid-April.
The second of two programs about the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) this year, this program included a speaker’s forum, a simulation exercise, a phone-in to President Barack Obama’s office and a petition. The phone-in and petition urged lawmakers’ support of the Fast Track Initiative and the Education for All Act – two Measures which target providing access to education for all children. Earlier this year, GEO targeted the MDG to eliminate poverty and raised $14,000 to build a school in rural China (Harker News, Dec. ’08, p. 25).
“One of the novel parts of the week was the focus on activism,” said senior David Kastelman, GEO president. The club’s adoption of MDG 2 “fit particularly well with our plan to focus on education and activism in the spring, as there has been past legislation supporting universal primary education,” he explained. “And the message of students advocating for students resonates particularly well.” The speaker’s forum featured four experts with direct concerns to global education: Kim Plewes of Free the Children; John Tupper, a lobbyist who works to advance such issues in the U.S. Congress; Jennifer Getz, founder of the Africa-based eduWeavers, and Mark McKenna, associate director of San Jose State University’s Global Studies Program. Kastelman acted as host and facilitator of the presentation to the US student body.
The Wednesday long lunch featured a simulation exercise on Rosenthal Field in which students moved from station to station and participated in brief activities which “ranged from throwing a coin in a ‘government budget’ cup to being timed on an obstacle course that represented the transportation obstacles for students in foreign countries,” said junior Christine Trinh, GEO secretary. “They were competitive and offered a challenge, which are aspects that definitely drive Harker students.”
“I loved the enthusiasm and spirit of the students who participated in the simulation,” said GEO member Josephine Chen, Gr. 10. “Many started competing with their friends to see who would win each of the activities.” Chef Steve Martin helped enhance participation in the simulation by serving lunch outdoors and approximately 70 students took part. The week culminated with a rousing Multicultural Assembly (see below). Kastelman, along with the GEO activism committee, met with U.S. Representative Zoe Lofgren on April 16 and hand-delivered their petition – signed by over 200 students and faculty.
Tags: Global Education, OutreachColby Rapson, Gr. 11, and teammates from various schools took first place at the Enterprise Leadership Conference March 11-13. The conference is a yearly event held by the San Jose Rotary Club, in which students spend three days drafting and presenting a business plan for a product they create themselves. Students from each participating school are randomly distributed into different teams.
Rapson’s company, The 9th Degree, came up with a product known as the WheelAwake. “It is a steering wheel mechanism that has sensors on it that collect heart rate and breathing rate data the first thirty seconds that a driver is in the car,” Rapson said. “The rest of the car ride, it senses for a threshold drop in heart or breathing rate. In order to prevent the driver from dozing off at the wheel, it sends vibrations through the steering wheel and sounds an alarm to the driver.”
Rapson’s team planned to use the services of an angel investor to get star ted. “Our business plan was extremely intricate, but our company, The 9th Degree, planned to start locally in the first year and extend to the entire nation by the third year,” said Rapson, who was chosen to be the CEO of her company. “Therefore, our profits would really star t to come in by the third year. Once we star ted up, we planned on advertising our product through partnerships with schools, DMVs and insurance companies.”
Although the members of Rapson’s group at first didn’t seem to have a lot of common ground, they quickly rallied behind their idea. “We all fell into our places and contributed a huge amount to the group progress,” she said. “Everything went really smoothly; we worked so cohesively that everything came together in the end and our final presentation showed the judges how seriously we took the competition.”
More than 40 Harker students lent helping hands to the Magic organization in mid-March, spending the day helping Mother Nature. Magic specializes in ecology-based volunteer work. Since their founding in 1979, Magic has planted tens of thousands of trees, written computer programs to forecast the economic and ecological effects of urban tree management and established the first ecological economics course at Stanford University.
“Together we tagged, surveyed and mulched more than a hundred trees; planted eight native oaks; abated coyote bush that was encroaching on recently planted oaks; installed protective shelters on more than a dozen trees to prevent deer browse; laughed and learned and enjoyed a beautiful day in a lovely natural (mostly) environment,” said Magic representative Robin Bayer, who also mentioned that she hoped to work with Harker students on future projects.
Students who embarked on the trip were:
Gr. 9: Dwight Payne, Jason Kuan, David Dominguez, David Fang, Stephen
Hughes, Nathan Hoffman, Daniel Mao, Ananth Subramaniam, Asia Howard,
Alex Mabanta, Saagar Sarin, Saurabh Sharan, Vikrum Jain, David Brunfeld,
Sebastian Herscher, Kirsten Herr, Devin Nguyen, Richard Lee, William
Chang, Robert Maxton, Aditya Sastry, Lauren Pinzás and Kushal Ranjan.
Gr. 10: Amir Mortazavi, Chris Ng, Daisy Mohrman, Katharine Forsberg, Justin
Shamlou, Rishi Bhatia, Riya Parikh, Alex Kablanian, Michael Prutton,
Ajit Punj, Baran Ozdemir, Jai Nagarajan, Howard Lio and Rishi Ravuri.
Gr. 11: Melanie Herscher, Jackie Ho and Jonathan Lau.
On March 19 and 20, students participating in this year’s J8 competition gathered with teachers and alumni to discuss two important problems facing the world’s population, and ways in which they can be remedied.
The two roundtable discussions, held at the Bistro Café in Manzanita Hall, were held to help the students prepare their applications for the J8 competition. Harker has a high number of students participating this year – eight teams of four students each – and as such, US librarian Lauri Vaughan and US history teacher Carol Zink organized the meetings to give the students the opportunity to voice their ideas.
The March 19 discussions dealt with infectious diseases, while the March 20 meeting addressed the problem of global warming and energy use. Teachers attended the meetings to facilitate discourse, thus helping students to come up with creative, well-rounded solutions. “Teachers generally played devil’s advocate and challenged kids to address the issue from several directions to test their viability,” Vaughan said. “Needless to say, it was fascinating stuff! I was thrilled to see faculty from such a variety of disciplines (history, science, ethics, math, literature) participate.”
Faculty on hand for the infectious diseases meeting were Ramsay Westgate, John Heyes, Sue Smith and Dan Hudkins. Teachers present at the global warming discussion were Eric Nelson, Shaun Jahshan, Westgate, Smith and Victor Adler. Two of the eight winners of the 2007 J8 competition were also present: senior David Kastelman and alum Aarathi Minisandram ’08. The event was co-sponsored by Harker’s Junior States of America and Global Empowerment Organization.
We are all members of the Harker community and it is important for us all to participate by helping to fund the myriad of programs that benefit all students. Did your child perform in the dance show? Play soccer for Harker? Participate in a lecture in one of our multimedia classrooms? Enjoy a class party? Check out a book from the library? These are just a few examples of student activities annual giving dollars fund.
This is the time of the year when we make our final push to secure the greatest percent of participation in this year’s annual giving campaign. Last year, 80 percent of parents made charitable contributions to the school and we are hoping to meet or exceed that level this year. Having a high percentage of participation puts us in the best possible position to receive foundation and corporate grants. These funding sources want to add value rather than replace stakeholders’ participation. In fact, last year our significant gain in parent participation was the reason we received a $250,000 grant.
We appeal to you to make your annual giving gift now for 2008-09 if you haven’t done so already. Your contribution will show your suppor t of our students and teachers, and you will help us improve our chances of receiving additional grants.
Please contact Melinda Gonzales, director of development, at melindag@harker.org with any questions.
Student artwork was on display during the AP Art Reception, held at the Nichols Hall atrium on April 8. Students, faculty and staff arrived to view an impressive variety of two- and three-dimensional pieces, each communicating its own themes and ideas.
The work of Julian Stahl explore the concept of tension with a unique variety of thought-provoking sculptures, including a tower made of drinking straws that seemed to be stretching ever upward, and an open hand attached to a close fist, with each end pulling against the other.
One of Matthew Gehm’s pieces featured an array of white miniature figures that vaguely resembled people. Nestled into the bunch was a lone black figure, bringing to mind “the idea of conformity and hidden prejudices in society,” Gehm said.
Stephanie Guo used the art of photography to take a detailed look at various aspects of her Chinese heritage. Works on display included extreme close-ups of Chinese food packaging and rice grains resting between a pair of chopsticks.
The distinct curvatures and balletic twisting of Omar Haque’s foam and plexiglass sculptures was inspired by the movement of storms. “I really wanted to convey a sense of motion with my concentration,” he said.
Silvia Cernea’s photographic pieces were created using an ordinary digital camera, with which she captured various scenes at concerts she attended. Cernea combined some of pictures with her graphic design skills to create dazzling promotional posters for the events she photographed.
The imaginative illustrations of Melody Lee told an “Alice in Wonderland”-style story solely through images. In the uniquely conceived narrative, a small girl must jump, climb and even change shape in order to complete her journey.
The digital illustrations that Christine Yu had on display rendered everyday natural wonders such as water lilies and cherries with a painterly approach that imbued them with a distinct, lifelike quality more akin to the works created on canvas than to those made on a tablet PC.
Also working with a theme from nature was Natasha Jeswani, whose expressive paintings of various fruits were more of an exercise in interpretation than in realism. “I focused more on shapes and colors and less on perfect details and the depiction of light,” Jeswani wrote in the statement accompanying her pieces.
Lauren Moser also wisely took some creative liberties when sculpting the faces that explored the nature of human emotion. Rather than focusing on accurately depicting the biological features of the human face, the exaggerated expressions put the emotions across by cleverly utilizing the art of caricature.
Shelby Drabman’s colorful illustrations offered a unique perspective on how humans receive and interpret music. Her works abstractly featured different media from various time periods, from vinyl LPs to iPods, forming a unique narrative on how the consumption of music has changed over time.
In contrast to the abstract concepts displayed by the other artists on display, Sian Yuan’s drawings welcomed outsiders into the life of her family. By depicting her family at home and at play, Yuan hoped to convey the sense of togetherness that she feels when spending time with her loved ones.
Many of these works, as well as those of several other talented Harker students, are currently on display in the Nichols Hall atrium. Please stop by and give them the attention they deserve!
The Harker chapter of the Key Club took a special trip to Anaheim in early April, where they visited the quintessential Orange County landmark, Disneyland, and also attended the California-Nevada-Hawaii Key Club Convention at the Anaheim Convention Center. A spring break well-spent!