This story originally appeared in the Fall/Winter 2019 issue of Harker Magazine.
Stacie Wallace spends her days as middle school English department chair and grade 8 English teacher. But what shines through most about her is her thoughtfulness and introspection, and her pride in her three alumnae daughters, Rachel ’05, Molly ’07 and Sophi ’09, each of whom has provided a grandchild to dote on! She reflects that, after a “tumultuous and unstable childhood … I’m grateful for the life I was able to create for myself,” and her conversation with Harker Magazine reveals the ways she lives for balance and gratitude each day.
What is the one thing in the world you would fix if you could wave a magic wand? Distances between family members. I would wave my wand and POOF!, everyone’s over for dinner at my house.
What one piece of advice you would offer anyone who asks? Don’t apologize for taking up space on the planet. If you need to apologize for something real, that’s fine, but don’t feel you have to apologize for everything.
What are you obsessed with? Right now, I’m obsessed with NYT Cooking, a Facebook group that shares recipes (from the New York Times and all kinds of others) and supports one another in our efforts to try new things.
What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever gotten? Advice/caution really: “This too shall pass.” It’s meant to reassure, I think, as in, “It won’t always be this hard.” That was so helpful when I was raising three little ones. But as I’ve grown older, I see it’s also a gentle warning to appreciate things in my life, because they won’t always be there, or be the same.
Where in the world are you the happiest? In my sister’s kitchen having a cup of coffee and talking and laughing. I never laugh as much as I do when we’re together.
If you could wake up tomorrow having gained any one quality or ability, what would it be? Ha! I would wake up ready to write that novel and get going full bore on it.
This story originally appeared in the Fall/Winter 2019 issue of Harker Magazine.
Schenelle Henry is a native New Yorker, raised in New York City. This Harker Preschool lead teacher made the move west to Harker in 2017, and lives with her husband, Leo, and daughter, Bella Grace, in downtown San Jose. Henry jokes that free time is a “rare commodity” with a toddler, so she cherishes both time spent with her family, and alone time when she can binge-watch shows stored up on her DVR – “the simple pleasures in life.” She shared some other musings with Harker Magazine.
When did you first really feel like an adult?
When I started taking accountability for my actions. Life happens, the good and the bad, but I always try to consider what I could have done differently or can do in the future to make a situation or relationship better.
What one piece of advice you would offer anyone who asks? Don’t just be yourself, be your best self.
Brag about something.
I’m great at organizing. I used to have an interior organizing business.
What is the one thing in the world you would fix if you could wave a magic wand?
I would want high-quality education and equal access to educational resources for all students – regardless of race, national origin or ZIP code, among other things.
What are you doing when you feel most alive? Singing or dancing like no one is watching. Literally, because I’m usually at home when this all goes down!
Do you have any pets?
I have a self-sustaining ecosphere of small shrimp. It’s low maintenance and pretty cool!
This article originally appeared in the winter 2019 issue of Harker Magazine.
Abigail Joseph
In September, Abigail Joseph, middle school learning, innovation and design director, was named one of the first recipients of the Computer Science Teachers Association’s Equity Fellowship. She is one of 10 teachers chosen for the program, which provides an array of opportunities for career development aimed at increasing equity in computer science education.
Ie-Chen Cheng
Golf coach Ie-Chen Cheng was named one of the Central Coast Section’s 2019 Fall Sport Honor Coaches. CCS identified Cheng’s focus on team aspects as a key factor, notable for a sport that typically emphasizes individual achievement. Her method has proven effective, leading girls golf to second place in CCS in 2018 and boys golf to six consecutive WBAL titles.
Lisa Diffenderfer
In October, lower school learning, innovation and design director Lisa Diffenderfer and lower school math teacher Eileen Schick presented at Fall CUE, an educational technology conference, in Rancho Cordova. The two held a workshop on games that improve students’ math skills, creative problem-solving and computational thinking. The workshop included a demonstration of the games and allowed teachers in attendance to try the games for themselves.
This story originally appeared in the Fall/Winter 2019 issue of Harker Magazine.
Aside from having one the school’s catchier acronyms, Harker’s learning, innovation and design (LID) department has for years been a key driver of much of the technology and methods that have made the school’s classroom experience continually exceptional. But there’s far more to LID’s process and philosophy than the latest device or app fashionable among teachers.
Harker has long been a tech-savvy school, partly owing to its roots in Silicon Valley. Student-built apps are in regular use on campus, and clubs host multiple programming competitions each year. Laptops see ubiquitous use by students and faculty for every kind of assignment, and teachers have made use of funds provided through the school’s LID Grant (formerly Tech Grant) program to explore new ways to integrate the latest technology into their instructional methods.
It wasn’t until relatively recently, however, that Harker took the crucial institutional step to decouple classroom innovation from the realm of information technology, a distinction that LID directors are hoping will become clearer in the future. “In the larger scope of education, innovation and educational technology, there was a significant shift away from associating what we do with the boxes and wires, the technical aspects of technology,” said Liz Brumbaugh, PS-12 LID director. “We provide the support for faculty to integrate whatever innovations, whatever creativity, whatever design pieces – whether that’s lesson design or their environmental design – and walk next to them in the development of whatever cool, great, inspiring new thing they want to try.”
Although these ideas may (and frequently do) incorporate a piece of technology, gadgets and software are no longer seen by LID as an essential piece of the puzzle. “Sometimes a crayon’s the best tool,” said Brumbaugh. Should a tech tool turn out to be more suitable than a crayon, LID takes steps to ensure that it’s a better fit for a teacher’s pedagogical approach, and that it is not being implemented for the sake of having a nice new toy to play with. “The technology that’s pervasive is another tool,” said Brumbaugh. “It’s an impactful tool, but you have to look at your lesson design. What’s your purpose? What’s your point in your lesson first? And then backwards plan and say, ‘Is technology the point of this?’”
Key to each LID director’s position is the requirement that they also have experience as classroom teachers, which offers unique insight into the day-to-day lives and activities of the educators they work with, in addition to familiarizing them with pedagogical theory.
“We have spent a lot of time teaching and being around teachers and learning about what makes good teaching even better,” said Diane Main, LID director at the upper school. “Many times when teachers have me come work with them or their students, or both, it’s not necessarily about technology, it’s about how we can do a better job of what we’re trying to do in that learning experience.”
To that end, teachers often see LID as a great source of feedback on their ideas, and have emerged from their discussions with LID inspired and invigorated. “The most important role that Lisa [Diffenderfer, lower school LID director,] plays for me is as a sounding board for helping me discern the best approach to designing lessons and activities,” said grade 5 English teacher Ann Smitherman. “She helps me determine what I really want to teach my students, and in turn, how I really want my students to show me what they’ve learned.”
Diffenderfer’s work has been instrumental in introducing virtual reality lessons to lower school classrooms, enabling students to, among other things, get detailed glimpses of far-off places relevant to their studies. She has been working with teachers to formulate ways to “take it a step further, helping teachers create their own virtual reality experiences for the students, more specific experiences that relate to the content of their classrooms,” she said.
When Smitherman wanted to use VR in her classroom as part of a unit on E.L. Konigsburg’s 1967 novel “From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler,” Diffenderfer worked with her “to create a Google Slides ‘journey’ that helped students explore such old-timey landmarks as the automat and Grand Central Station,” she recalled. “Students were able to work at their own pace to complete the work, and it made the literature come to life.”
Another, less technology-focused project was spurred by Smitherman’s session at the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project at Columbia University last year, aimed at developing reading and writing skills in young students by creating new methods for teaching and assessment. Smitherman returned from the two-week session with an idea for a new writing program that is currently being piloted among a self-selected group of teachers. Diffenderfer and Smitherman have worked closely to develop the pilot program “in a more organized and research-based fashion,” Diffenderfer said.
This particular project is one where Diffenderfer’s experience as a teacher has proved crucial. “Lisa has a great understanding of our curriculum, knows the ‘latest and greatest’ tools – not all of which require technology – to help me and our students reach our goals,” said Smitherman. “She asks really probing questions, forcing me to clarify the outcomes I seek.”
In addition to academics, LID also has applied its expertise to areas such as digital citizenship, student wellness and social justice. Earlier this year, middle school history teacher Cyrus Merrill and middle school LID director Abigail Joseph worked together to create a “social justice hackathon for students to take on real-world challenges and attempt to put together potential real-world solutions,” Merrill said. “I want to empower students to think they themselves can take on issues in the present, not just learn about them in the past.”
The result of that collaboration is the Get MAD (Make A Difference) design workshop and hackathon, which took place in November and saw students organize into groups to develop ideas to combat various social problems using their creativity and design thinking, a method of problem-solving that involves ascertaining a greater sense of who will be seeing and using the things they’ve made.
Joseph also worked with several teachers who attended the Institute for Social and Emotional Learning this past summer. “I helped them debrief to generate ideas for their actionable next steps,” Joseph said. “So I led them through a two-hour design thinking process, and at the end of that they came up with two concrete ideas that they wanted to bring back to staff and the parent community around introducing SEL at Harker.”
Design thinking is popular in the maker community, with which Joseph has spent considerable time at meetups and conferences. She runs and curates the middle school’s LID Hub, a maker and design thinking space which she hopes to see become “a space on campus where teachers and students can go and make their ideas take flight and test out things and try developing any ideas or thoughts that they have.”
Joseph one day would like to have students and teachers working together in the LID Hub, and to have the students become experienced enough to offer lessons of their own. “My big vision is to have the students teach the teachers,” she said.
In the meantime, teachers have spent a lot of time teaching one another during the LID Vision Days that are held each year, in which they share new methods or concepts they have integrated into their instruction, often as a result of the LID Grant program. Ostensibly an opportunity for teachers to find new ways to enhance their methods, LID Vision Days have also acted as forums for teachers to brainstorm and discuss a wide range of topics that affect learners.
“It’s really about the other people in the room getting a chance to learn and/or participate. It’s not always what we could call a sit-and-get kind of thing, where the teacher teaches and everybody just learns something,” said Main. “Often it’s hands on, it’s ‘Why don’t you bring your laptop and we’ll go through this together?’ or a conversation where the person facilitating is really just the one starting the conversation, and it doesn’t have to be that they’re leading it.”
One session took the form of a discussion on how to teach girls and how teachers often unknowingly carry gender-based biases with them into the classroom. “There’s a lot of implicit bias towards males in the classroom; there are certain behaviors that tend to be seen as more masculine that are seen as more favorable,” said Main.
In another session facilitated by Main and upper school Spanish teacher Abel Olivas, students from the Gender and Sexuality Alliance invited teachers to ask questions about the experiences of LGBTQ+ students, including topics such as gender-neutral restrooms, how to ask students about correct pronoun usage and avoiding the use of everyday gendered phrases such as “you guys.”
“Those conversations have been exciting to be a part of because they’re a part of our culture here and not just about our job,” Main said. “That’s what LID wants to be about, is helping transform the culture of the school so that everyone feels like it’s a very comfortable, safe, positive learning space.”
Earlier this year, Joseph spearheaded the effort to help make LID Vision Days even more student-focused with the first Student LID Vision. “I thought, well why don’t students have an opportunity to showcase all the cool learning that they do in and outside of the classroom, because they all do so much?” she recalled. The event showcased the engaging aspects of everything from debate to origami to yearbook signing, mirroring LID’s philosophy that learning can take many unlikely forms.
“Providing that space for our students to start having a little bit of voice and choice and to recognize that their learning can happen beyond their classroom is probably the thing I’m most proud of,” Joseph said. “I’m looking forward to making that bigger and better than last year and utilizing some faculty and students to help design what it looks like.”
To this end, Joseph is planning to form student and faculty LID councils that meet separately to discuss LID’s impact on the school community. Brumbaugh is also hoping to bring teachers who’ve worked with LID to conferences and co-present with them about ways they’ve applied learning, innovation and design principles in their teaching methods. Although Harker has hosted and invited teachers from outside the school to events such as the Harker Teacher Institute, such events have become extremely common.
“Conferences are a dime a dozen, especially in this area and especially as it relates to educational technology,” Brumbaugh said. “It’s almost impossible not to find some weekend throughout the entire year where people could go to a conference within 20 miles and get some educational technology training.” The addition of online resources such as YouTube channels and podcasts, she added, makes it more difficult for events such as the Harker Teacher Institute to set themselves apart.
As an alternative to overcrowding the selection of events, LID began requesting teachers to submit proposals last spring for presentations on how they’ve worked with LID to expand or strengthen their methods, which the LID directors plan to craft together with the teachers. For teachers more reticent about presenting on their achievements, LID directors have offered to present with them. “Teachers are notoriously humble, and because they’re notoriously humble, they don’t toot their own horns,” Brumbaugh said. “But if you can say there are people who need to learn a thing, they’ll be motivated by that.”
Meanwhile, the directors themselves are always seeking opportunities for new methods and technologies to bring to their colleagues. Next year, they plan to attend SXSW Edu, the educational arm of the world-famous SXSW culture festival in Austin. “We all go out to these different education innovation-rich conferences to keep up with the landscape of how people are innovating in education,” Joseph said.
According to Brumbaugh – who started in education as an English teacher and previously worked at the Santa Clara County Office of Education as instructional technology manager, serving more than 200,000 students – Harker is in a unique position to lead in a developing field. “The fact that we have the people in the first place sets us apart, but then that we have pretty high standards for what those people are going to be able to do once they’re in this position, is another level altogether,” she said. “So I think what sets us apart is the structure, which is representative of the philosophy, and the individual people. There’s such synchronicity, and it’s really beautiful when I stand back from being in the team and I’m like, this is good.”
This story originally appeared in the Fall/Winter 2019 issue of Harker Magazine.
Earlier this year, a contingent of upper school students traveled to Scotland for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the world’s largest arts festival. Putting on a pared-down version of “Urinetown,” the 2019 upper school spring musical, the show was set up, performed and torn down in just 90 minutes, a daunting task for any theater troupe, much less a group of high school students performing in a venue very different from their usual environs. Nevertheless, the productions went smoothly and received praise from local media, such as EdinburghGuide, which raved, “This particular ensemble from the award-winning high school conservatory The Harker School blows you away with their character work and synchronicity, a display well beyond their years.” But while the performances garner most of the attention-grabbing pull quotes, there’s no show to be had without the crew, whose skills at running a show on time and glitch-free were learned in Harker’s technical theater program.
As a discipline, technical theater comprises a massive range of theatrical aspects essential for a successful show. “Technical theater supports the productions we do at Harker,” said upper school technical theater teacher, and the school’s production manager, Brian Larsen. “So kids involved in technical theater work on stage crew, move things around, construct, paint and install scenery, operate the lights, soundboard and follow spots, help with costuming, putting things together.”
Such a broad scope naturally attracts students with diverse interests, but Larsen noted that it is rare that students enter the upper school program knowing exactly what they want to do. “If a student comes in and is very focused on being a sound technician, we want to try and help them with that track as much as possible,” he said. Far more common are students who discover their interests on their own after some experimentation. “What we’ve discovered is kids come here and they try a couple of things and go, ‘ooh that’s interesting,’ and they get a little more involved in that component,” Larsen said. “But we don’t tend to get a lot of kids who come through the door and say, ‘I’m a lighting designer.’ We’ve had those students, we’ve had those kids who did lighting outside of our organization … which is tremendous, but on the whole, we try to have the kids have as many opportunities as possible.”
In order to help students better find these opportunities and discover the aspects of technical theater they want to pursue, the performing arts department soon will offer a class on the study of technical theater, which recently received UC approval. “The study-of class will be very broad-based,” said Larsen, who also noted that the Rothschild Performing Arts Center provides a suitable space for experimentation. “The kids will have a lot of opportunities to try all manner of things. [Rothschild] is a large lab, so we’ll have a lot of opportunity for them to get immersed in things and try things out.”
The beginnings of Harker’s technical theater program date back to 1996 when Larsen joined the middle school faculty to teach theater production. With the start of the upper school and the opening of what is now the lower school campus two short years later, the challenge of teaching two classes on separate campuses compelled Larsen to seek another teacher for the grade 6 class. Danny Dunn was then brought on to teach grade 6 while Larsen taught at the middle and upper schools. When the middle school campus opened in 2005, Dunn moved her class to Blackford. Under her direction, more hands-on elements were added and her students began working shows, the first of which was a major task for a group of young students. “The very first show that the sixth grade students ever crewed was one of the great big huge shows that we put on to welcome the Tamagawa visitors,” Dunn said. Though there was some concern that such a young and inexperienced crew could take on the task, “Sure enough, the kids did a great job,” Dunn remembers.
The move to Blackford left Dunn with no tech theater students at the lower school to work on that campus’ productions. “So I started the fifth grade program because I’d lost all my tech kids at the lower school.” Dunn’s classes began as a primer on theater production: “how a theater works, jobs in the theater and whatnot,” she recalled.
She later began inviting students to help build sets on the weekends. “Parents would drop their kids off and we would just have a great time and build sets,” she said. “That became very popular and still is to this day.” True to Dunn’s vision, students in grade 5 perform a great deal of hands-on work, building props, sets and occasionally costumes. “If we’re doing the picnic show here with middle school actors, we might need 100-plus Robin Hood hats,” Dunn said.
Tools of the trade are also learned early on in the program, including the use of (and safety precautions with) power tools used to create the sets as well as soundboard and light board operation, and even special effects makeup and stage combat. “My goal is to have them not just help the grown-ups do it but for them to take ownership of an aspect of the performance,” Dunn said.
At the middle school, technical theater is offered as a series of electives, starting with a grade 6 design class that teaches the fundamentals of creating a scene using elements of scenery, lighting and sound. One exercise has students design a scene from the stage adaptation of the famous children’s novel “The Phantom Tollbooth.” Every aspect of the scene, including props, lighting, costumes and special effects, is conceptualized and critiqued.
Middle school students who wish to continue their studies have the option of taking an elective in theater production and design for grades 7 and 8, taught by Paul Vallerga, the middle school technical director, who has also been Harker’s primary set designer for 17 years. It is here that students begin working on elements that are used in major middle school productions. “The first day of class, one of the things I try to tell them is that, besides just the tech theater aspect, what I want them to learn from the class is that any time they’re watching anything – a TV show or movie – realize that everything you see is on purpose,” said Vallerga said. “Even if the decision was just, this where I’m going to put the camera to shoot those trees, somebody decided that’s what they want the audience to see.” Vallerga, who also spent 20 years with the now-defunct California Theatre Center, has students practice designing sets using William Gibson’s “The Miracle Worker” as a basis. “I try to teach them a few things about traffic patterns,” he said, noting the times he has had to coach students against “making a doorway that’s a foot wide.”
Further bolstering the middle school tech theater offerings is the afterschool technical theater class open to all middle school students, which includes weekly workshops in a variety of disciplines, including prop-making, makeup, costume construction and fight scene choreography.
By the time she arrived at the upper school, junior Geneva Devlin had spent considerable time in the technical theater programs at other campuses. Although she didn’t feel as enthusiastic about the craft as she once had in middle school, she nevertheless signed up to be a member of the crew for “42nd Street,” the first spring musical to be produced at the Rothschild Performing Arts Center. “It was my first time doing tech for an actual show and I loved it,” she said. “Being able to bond with my fellow techies and dance along backstage was so much fun, I didn’t want it to end.” She later joined the Harker Conservatory’s certificate program for technical theater and has since been joining the crew for shows whenever possible.
The upper school fortunately provides students with a wide range of learningopportunities, given the ambitious size and complexity that the productions often achieve. Certificate candidates are also prioritized when it comes time to decide which positions on the crew will be filled, especially “if there is something in particular they either are really interested in or haven’t done yet,” said Larsen. “So we make that available to them first and then we open it up to the other students to sign up for positions that interest them.”
Similar to how certificate candidates in other disciplines are required to act as crew members, so too must technical theater students perform in a show as part of their track in order to see how these different elements of crafting a show are affected by and complement one another. “You have to do both sides so you can see what that experience is,” Larsen said. “So you understand what a performer going through rehearsal is experiencing.”
Shanna Polzin ’10, who is now working as a production manager and stage manager in New York City (the Bryant Park Tree Lighting is her favorite event to work each year), first became fascinated the inner workings of the shows she performed in as a sixth grader, when a few of her friends began working on the crew. “In high school, I was part of the Conservatory program as a dancer, and we had a requirement of two technical positions,” she said. “That was my first experience with being a backstage crew member, as well as a follow spot operator.”
Though she spent most of her time at Harker as a performer, the program taught Polzin to appreciate just how much the crew works to make a show possible. “From a very young age, Mr. Larsen taught me the importance of tech theater and how no show can happen without the crew,” she said. “So while I was predominantly a performer, I was always taught to notice, appreciate and respect the tech side of things.”=
Although Polzin did not receive her certificate in technical theater, she cites the experience she gained at Harker as a factor in helping her find her current career, “from being aware of all the parts that go into putting on a show, to the work ethic, attention to detail and time management skills that get developed in all Harker students, to the general love of performing and making an audience happy,” she said.
“Ideally, if a student starts in fifth grade then takes the sixthgrade design elective, then works with Paul in the seventh and eighth grade and then does the Conservatory program with Brian, by the time they leave they should be able to get a job in theater no problem, if that’s what they want to do,” said Dunn. “But even kids who only take part of the program still enjoy it. They like being part of a show without having to act.”
Dunn also has noticed that technical theater provides a way for students who are reticent or less enthusiastic about acting to enjoy the process of putting on a show, which occasionally leads them to discovering an appreciation for performing they were previously unaware of. “I notice in middle school there’s a whole lot of being too embarrassed to perform,” she noted, “so students who are not comfortable being in the spotlight or putting themselves out there can dress all in black and blend into the scenery but still be completely part of the show, part of a cast or crew, part of the experience.”
The opening of the Rothschild Performing Arts Center presents a number of exciting opportunities for the technical theater program, which is already set to grow with the addition of the Study of Technical Theater class next year.
“It’s done two huge things, and neither of them can be understated,” Larsen said. The first is the presence of a fully equipped facility located on the same campus where upper school technical theater students spend most of their days, which removes the disruption of having to travel to a different campus to work. “The kids know right after school, they can come to the building, they can rehearse, they can build, they can do all the things that are inherent in being on the campus,” Larsen said.
The second major change is how the facility further connects the upper school’s performing arts department to the culture of the campus. “It’s not that much of a big deal now if students catch a ball game, grab a bite to eat and come see our show,” Larsen said. “It’s all contained within the culture of the upper school; it’s right here.”
It’s also had benefits for the middle school, which for the time being has a space entirely its own that it no longer has to share with another campus. “We don’t have to kick the drama teachers out of their rooms for a week, and say ‘hey, these are our [upper school cast’s] dressing rooms now,’” Vallerga said. For his part, Vallerga also looks forward to using the facilities at Rothschild to create props and scenery for middle school productions, as well as bringing middle school students to the upper school to work on the elements of their shows.
Whatever potential the new building holds for the program, there are students who remain in love with the process and its people above all. “I enjoy getting to learn something new each time I crew. I further my knowledge and gain more experience,” said Devlin. “I also really love bonding with all of the actors. Being able to interact and learn from the professional tech community that works at Harker is like a dream.”
2003
Jess (Cu) Killips had a baby boy. “On July 16 we welcomed Owen Killips to the world. He was a tiny little nugget, coming three weeks early at 5 lbs. 7 oz. His older sister, Haley, started preschool this month and is loving it.” Jess and Andrew are doing well, especially now that Owen is sleeping (almost) through the night!
2007
Chanelle Kasik recently got engaged to J.P. Dimalanta in Cape Cod, Mass. Joining their family is their new Miniature Australian Shepherd puppy Theodore (“Theo”). Chanelle and J.P. reside in New York City.
2010
Vishesh Jain and Rashmi Sharma got married in Pleasanton this past May, 11 years after they started dating during their sophomore year at Harker! Vishesh’s sister, Saachi Jain ’14, played the important role of tying the knot that held them together during their combined Hindu and Jain wedding ceremony. Their best friends and classmates Kelsey Hilbrich, Andrea Lincoln and Nathaniel Edwards attended the wedding. Photo provided by Manali Anne Photography
2013
Danny Wang began medical school in England this fall. Danny and classmates Ashley Del Alto and Michael Chen joined Kerry Enzensperger, Clare Elchert and Jaron Olson for a fun gathering to say goodbye and good luck at a send-off dinner at Gombei in Japantown in San Jose.
2017
This summer Andrew Tierno completed a software engineering internship at Facebook. He fully enjoyed his work at the company and the perks that came with it (ample food options and a luxury residence in Cupertino). He will be returning to Facebook in summer 2020 to continue with his passion of machine learning and data science. Andrew is a junior at Stanford University, pursuing computer engineering with a specialization in machine learning and math.
2018
Rajiv Movva, a Davidson Fellow, is first author on a paper about deciphering regulator DNA sequences published at PLOS: Check out Rajiv’s other accolades and a short description of his project at https://lnkd.in/g-XNqNx and https://lnkd.in/gSVuZR8.
Sumati Wadhwa conducted sessions related to neuroscience at the Splash at Berkeley fall 2019 program. Splash at Berkeley is a student organization that brings local high school students to the University of California, Berkeley, for a day of unlimited student-led learning. Read more, here.
This story originally appeared in the Fall/Winter 2019 issue of Harker Magazine.
When someone asks for a volunteer, Roshni Mehra ’06 is often the first person to raise her hand. Her journey from finance to philanthropy was a result of her decision to pursue her passion and willingness to be open to every opportunity that came her way.
Whether it was in Cheryl Cavanaugh’s English class at Harker, where she learned how the power of someone’s passion can ignite your own, or working with disadvantaged students through PIMCO Foundation’s Tools for Tomorrow program, Mehra wasn’t afraid to follow her heart to find what’s right. Mehra attended Harker’s upper school and then went on to the University of California, Irvine, to pursue business economics and international studies. While she was in college, she interned at Merrill Lynch for two years and then joined asset management firm PIMCO upon graduation.
Being the youngest person ever hired and the only woman on the team, she was hungry to learn, working from 3 a.m. to 4 p.m. every day on the trade floor. While she harnessed many skills while working in finance, it was never her passion. The problem was, she didn’t know what her passion actually was – that is, until she got involved in PIMCO’s Women’s Leadership Network and the PIMCO Foundation.
“Due to my early work hours and the late evening afterschool programs I was volunteering with, I started to stretch myself too thin,” Mehra said. “I soon realized that my favorite part of my job was taking place after work. That’s when I knew there was a problem.”
She took the bold step to quit her job at PIMCO and do a year of service and exploration. As a part of this soulsearching mission, she had two goals for the year: first, to build an educational foundation in the nonprofit world, and second, to get as much experiential knowledge as possible doing pro bono work.
She took classes through Stanford University and Coursera.Being on campus, Mehra soon became involved with Stanford’s Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society (Stanford PACS), which develops and shares knowledge to improve philanthropy, strengthen civil society and effect social change. “I said yes to every opportunity that came my way,” said Mehra with a bright smile on her face.
But she didn’t stop there. She also volunteered for a locally based, internationally aimed nonprofit called Home of Hope, which advances education for girls in India. In typical Mehra fashion, she joined its board of directors, became the executive director of the English Empowerment Program and director of the Youth Chapter, and even launched a social venture called Mentors Without Borders, which was featured on NBC Bay Area.
“I discovered I was most passionate about creating a lasting impact and igniting empowerment through mentorship and education,” she said. “I knew I needed to be a part of an impact-driven organization.” She’s doing just that at Stanford Graduate School of Business as the associate director of development marketing and communications, where her job doesn’t feel like work because it is so aligned with her passion and desire to have a positive impact in the world.
In addition to creating meaningful impact reports for donors, Mehra also volunteers as a pre-major advisor for Stanford undergraduate students, serving as a mentor and life coach for a cohort of 15-plus freshman and sophomore students as they navigate the transition from high school to college. But that’s not the only way she gives back. She volunteers with a group that brings therapy dogs to campus every month for students, faculty and staff to de-stress.
“Having hired Roshni 4 1/2 years ago, I subsequently promoted her into several other positions. Her capacity to take on increased responsibility has grown consistently,” said Susan Chung, director of development marketing and communications at Stanford Graduate School of Business. “What I appreciate most about Roshni is her approach to getting things done. Whether that be within our immediate team or across departments, her positive impact is grounded in seeking to understand issues and opportunities from multiple perspectives.”
This article originally appeared in the winter 2019 issue of Harker Magazine.
Harker’s incubator program, after one full year, has turned out some solid successes, awarding cash grants to students who developed business plans and successfully pitched to a panel. Now, starting year two, the benefits to students – far beyond money – are becoming apparent.
The program launched with a single class in summer 2017. That first class, a no-credit offering, brought students three of the critical ingredients for entrepreneurial success: strategic advice and mentorship, a dedicated support team and seed funding. A couple of pretty interesting ventures arose from that class, which was so well-received that the department developed the curriculum for a regular school-year program of two for credit classes to start a year later, in fall 2018. (See links in box on page 49 for more.)
The for-credit classes, Honors 2, ran all year. By May 2019, about $20,000 in venture funds were handed out to eight companies developed by 11 students. In Incubator 1, students created and commercialized their own product or service.“Teams are led through the lean startup processes of developing hypotheses about a business concept, testing those hypotheses, adapting and continually iterating,” said Michael Acheatel, business & entrepreneurship teacher.
Incubator 2 is geared toward students who have already launched a company and are focused on growing their business. “Students are led through three-week long ‘sprints’ where students identify their individual goals and tasks at the beginning of the sprint and present a demo of their accomplishments at the end of the sprint,” said Acheatel.
Students in each of the courses receive coaching and mentorship from entrepreneurs, investors and business experts, and a key element in the 2018-19 classes was provided by Next47, a venture capital firm, which donated $10,000 in venture funds.
Now, year two of the for-credit incubator classes has started and the Incubator 1 students are in the midst of the vetting processes, while the new Incubator 2 students are using their funding to develop their ventures to bring them to the next level – a functional organization with a product.
The goal, however, is not to create million dollar companies in high school, though in Silicon Valley’s entrepreneurial atmosphere, that is not beyond reach. The real goal is to teach students to think critically when developing ideas, to use resources, like mentors, to advance their knowledge and network, and to help the students gain confidence that careful, hard work will bring concrete results at some level.
“The goal of the course is to provide students with experiences that teach values and practices that are not traditionally taught in the classroom but are hugely important in life/ work,” said Acheatel.
“We want to inculcate soft skills such as resiliency, problem-solving, creative thinking, public speaking and networking. These skills are built into the lean methodology of controlled failure, of seeking failure early as a means of improving. Furthermore, they learn these skills by working with mentors and pitching investors,” he said.
“Additionally, they learn technical skills that they’ll use in the workplace like financial modeling, conducting competitive and market research, executing marketing campaigns, creating and delivering pitches, developing investor reports, etc. These are skills that they will use in almost any job they take, yet they are not taught in traditional school environments,” Acheatel noted.
Nerine Uyanik and Arun Sundaresan, both grade 12, are in the Incubator 1 class, exploring the skills needed for serious entrepreneurship for the first time. Their company is designing electronic flashcards that address shortcomings in existing digital flashcards.
“Most digital flashcards have a two-sided format that inherently limits the content that can be asked,” said Uyanik. “To study certain concepts, such as vocabulary, would require either making many flashcards with closely related but still separate information or making a single flashcard that contains all the related information. One is inefficient, and the other is ineffective, potentially coming at the cost of the student’s own learning,” she said.
The pair is working on a multisided flashcard that suits a student’s needs better. For example, when studying a molecule, to learn its name, formula, molecular geometry and structure would require a program in which students can input all the information and determine how they review that info.”Nothing of the sort exists,” said Uyanik, “so I decided to take this incubator class to develop such an application.”
Partner Sundaresan came in with more background and is really looking for an opportunity to grow as an entrepreneur. “I’ve had a lot of exposure to business and entrepreneurship before, both academically and in extracurricular pursuits,” he said. “I feel like taking the incubator class was a natural progression in my explorations of business, as I will launch a for-profit company.”
The first lesson the pair learned was that although each came to class with independent ideas, there was enough crossover that they could grow their ideas together. “At first, we hesitated to work together since we envisioned pursuing completely different paths,” said Uyanik, “but Mr. Acheatel pointed out that we both were trying to address problems with existing study tools, just with different solutions in mind … so he encouraged us to work together at least during the early stages, where having more ideas on the table wouldn’t hurt. We then delved into the market research and analyzed our ideas realistically.” That’s when the real growth began.
“Arun realized that my proposition seemed more feasible to achieve through this class, so he decided to let go of pursuing his vision to focus on mine,” said Uyanik. “I realize how difficult it was for him to make such a decision, for we both had strong ideas and intentions when deciding to take this class. As he has come to understand my idea, though, I am grateful that he is now also convinced of its potential and confident in his work. Arun’s expertise in coding and technology makes up for my lack of experience in that area when addressing the specifics of product development, and my deeper understanding of the product helps drive the vision of the company. Through this class, I have come to value working with someone with a complementary set of skills and perspectives.”
“Since the first day,” noted Sundaresan, “when we were figuring out problems that our businesses would solve, we had to think creatively and in terms of how to solve existing problems. Presentation skills are also vital for this, because we create our own elevator pitches that are regularly revised and presented. Nerine and I have definitely used this class to expand our networks,” he said. “It’s a class, but it’s all real,” said Uyanik. “Everything we learn and do ties into making practical progress. The pitches we now refine in class will eventually be delivered to investors. Our homework – completing market analyses and conducting customer interviews, for example – reflects the work that businesses must do to grow. We learn to do, and we do to learn.”
Anay Karwal, grade 12, an Incubator 1 student, is developing Persona, an app that automatically recommends outfits to high school and college students, and to business professionals, based on their existing wardrobe and their fashion preferences. He is already seeing the kind of life-growth that Acheatel noted. “I joined the incubator class because I really wanted to attain an experiential perspective with a business,” said Karwal. “I’ve participated in DECA since my freshman year, and I wanted to utilize all the skills that I learned in order to create something tangible. By the end of the year, I want to have a working prototype to take into college.”
Karwal is seeing the building blocks to his goal emerge from the course. “From working at this startup alone, I’ve now realized that collaboration is extremely crucial in life, because it provides you a new perspective and is much more effective,” he said.
It is clear that Incubator 1 students are acquiring skills essential to developing a product, and that personal growth is part of that learning, including how to be flexible, how to work with others on complex tasks and, in Sundaresan’s case, how to switch gears when necessary to build out a successful product. But beyond the incubator program, the students are finding their advancing skills eminently useful in other classes and in life.
“With my experiences in DECA and this class, I refined my public speaking abilities and I constantly apply that to all my classes. The problem-solving skills I learned from this class help in my math and economics classes,” Karwal said, adding that he now appreciates learning from others. “The best thing I’ve gotten out of the class is my mentor, as he consistently provides me with help and guidance,” Karwal concluded.
Nanoseed is a Harker student-developed nonprofit that organizes student and business loans and grants to underserved regions in China. Graduating seniors pass down leadership of the company each year, and this year Andrew Sun, grade 11, heads up the venture and is “franchising” the fundraising program at other schools. “We’re interested in helping those who have been abandoned by traditional lending organizations in China,” Sun said.
For Sun, the rewards transcend grades and personal accomplishments. “I am passionate about effecting change beyond myself,” Sun said. “I’ve realized through heading Nanoseed that it’s incredibly gratifying to do something that will directly impact someone else’s life. It’s helped me realize that there is much more to life than grades and homework assignments, which is a balance I have definitely struggled with in the past. For example, Nanoseed’s benefit concert last year [to reduce poverty in rural China] really opened my perspective.
“The summer reading for the class also introduced us to a systematic approach to finding solutions to problems by testing one feature/aspect at a time, similar to isolating one variable in an experiment,” Sun noted. “This approach helped me also with improving my speeches in congressional debate, another activity I’m involved in. I’ve found applications of that systematic approach by changing one thing about a speech every iteration and seeing if that achieved the improvement I wanted it to achieve.”
For Sun, like Karwal, the biggest advantage to the class is networking and being able to interact with the other people in the class. “They’ve given me so many ideas for fundraisers, operations, etc., and have also been wonderful about offering help when I need it,” said Sun.
“The collaborative aspect of the class is really rewarding and I’m most grateful I took the class for this reason.” Claire Luo, grade 11, now in Incubator 2, formed a company last year called GetTime, whose mission is to decrease stress and increase productivity among teenage students through an engaging and efficient time management app. The current version of the app consists of three core features – a dashboard for tracking progress and tasks, a prioritized to-do list and a timing function to keep students on track throughout their study period. “What differentiates my app is that it combines task and time management on one platform and specifically targets high school students, which helps make the experience more streamlined and effective,” she said.
Luo, too, has gained wider perspective through her work in the incubator program. “One overarching truth I have learned is that flexibility and adaptability are key, for me as a person and for my company,” she said. “Whether this means continually soliciting feedback and revising features or altering my goals to fit new circumstances, I have learned to be more open to change. In particular, going out and talking to potential customers and mentors has encouraged me to embrace pivoting some aspects of my app.”
The payoff is there in the learning, even if the product never gets to market. “I have definitely been able to apply these skills, both in creating my company and in my own life,” said Luo. “For instance, designing the app and then asking for potential customer feedback was a new experience for me and required me to break down the tasks and keep going at it resiliently. The ability to have a clear project end goal and then executing each task one at a time has applied to any other large group project in other classes.
“In addition, presenting and pitching to investors has improved my presenting skills. In my other classes (and activities like DECA), I am more comfortable with speaking in front of larger groups and with using business terms. Also, I learned how to create more effective visuals that are clear and concise, which has been incredibly helpful in other classes.”
No surprise, Luo has also embraced the collaborative value of networking. “Networking is also an invaluable skill, since I am now more aware of the importance of going out and connecting with others in order to expand my network. The type of creative and entrepreneurial thinking cultivated in this class has improved my analysis skills, for example, by allowing me to better evaluate the benefits and drawbacks of certain things.” Luo feels the class has given her the tools to set and reach ambitious milestones.
“As starting a company is a very individualized process, setting goals is often up to what I want to accomplish, not what someone else tells me,” she said. “This class has inspired me to be proactive in adapting to changes and staying on top of my work, and has provided me the resources I need to achieve my goals.”
This story originally appeared in the Fall/Winter 2019 issue of Harker Magazine.
When Matthew Gehm ’09 was at the upper school, he didn’t know what career path he wanted to pursue – until a pivotal class his senior year. A Harker student since kindergarten, he was strong in math and science, but was also drawn to the arts.
“Matt was not a typical Harker math- and science-focused student, because his visual art classes were a lifeline for him,” said Pilar Agüero-Esparza, art teacher. “As a teen, he seemed to be going through a tough time and art was a way he could channel his creativity and inner self.”
His creativity and bent toward math led him to take an architecture class in the fall of his senior year – and that sealed the deal. His grandfather was an architect, so he had been exposed to the field, but everything clicked in the class, and he realized he wanted to pursue architecture in college.
So after high school, he set off to study architecture at the University of Southern California, which had a highly rated, five-year program. He had found his passion in architecture but also continued his digital artwork, which is focused around the misuse of digital tools used in architecture in pursuit of novel forms and complexity. After graduating from USC, he started Forester Gehm, a multidisciplinary design firm, which allowed him to balance the line between art and architecture by working on larger installation pieces.
He also worked for some architecture firms and then decided to attend graduate school, all while keeping Forester Gehm humming.
“Matt reached out to me after he graduated from USC, and I saw a laser focus and ambition light up in him about his life and career goals,” said Agüero-Esparza. “Soon after our meeting, I saw him reach for new heights, including entering his artwork in exhibitions and then applying to graduate school.”
Gehm decided to attend Harvard University to pursue a Master in Architecture II, a two-year program that extends the base of knowledge of the professional field with particular emphasis on design.
“If you asked me when I was graduating Harker if I ever thought I would go to Harvard, I would have said ‘no,’” Gehm said in his steady voice. “It felt out of reach, but then I found something I really cared about and something I was passionate about and it felt more real.”
One of Gehm’s projects at Harvard, “Tin Whiskers, or The Ghost in the Machine Part II” with Jonathan Gregurick, is a “conceptual hybrid of motion and stasis, which blurs the lines between control and chaos, structure and fenestration or machines and technics,” according to Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design website.
The intellectual challenges of coursework combined with fascinating history courses and students from around the globe consumed Gehm for an amazing two years.
But when Gehm graduated in 2019, he knew he wanted to return to Los Angeles where his girlfriend lived and the beach beckoned. Instead of racing home, though, he spent a month traveling and camping across the United States. He’s an avid outdoorsman who enjoys hiking, camping and going to the beach.
Gehm is now a designer at Gehry Partners LLP, a full-service firm with broad international experience. He just started with Gehry and is involved in designing a skyscraper in Toronto. He plans to build his career in architecture but also continue his artwork.
“I realize that life is not a sprint but rather a series of opportunities,” said Gehm. “I’m lucky to have found my passion.”
Kelsey Wu ’19 has scored big in her first semester at Harvard. Her paper, written at Harker as a John Near Excellence in History Education Endowment Fund scholar, was published in the fall issue of The Harvard Undergraduate Research Journal.
The paper, “The Loneliness Disease: Challenges of First-Generation Chinese-American Parents of Autistic Children” was selected by The Harvard Undergraduate Research Journal (THURJ) not only for publication, but also as the recipient of the Best Manuscript Award with a $700 stipend. The article is featured on the cover of the magazine as well.
A biannual publication, THURJ showcases peer-reviewed undergraduate research from all academic disciplines. Manuscripts are rigorously reviewed by the peer review board, and the selected manuscripts are further reviewed by Harvard graduate students, postdocs and professors. “In my case,” said Wu, “I received very detailed comments from two professors and one post-doc on criteria such as importance, novelty, logical flow, rigor of methods, strength of results, and style. I then made edits based on their suggestions and returned the paper to the peer review board for the next round of review.
“I’m endlessly grateful for the Near-Mitra program for providing me such a unique opportunity to engage in college-level humanities research in high school. It has laid a solid foundation for my research and academic writing skills in the social sciences, which are definitely conducive to my pursuit in college.” Here is a link to Wu’s original paper at Harker. We will post the link to the updated THURJ article when the magazine is uploaded.
Wu is working as a research assistant at Harvard Law School, is involved in Harvard Open Data Project, and sings for an a cappella group. She noted she has, “met a lot of interesting and inspirational people here and have made lots of really supportive friends” at Harvard. Go, Kelsey!