The theme of the 2019 National Junior Classical League Convention was “apes non sunt solitaria natura” (“Bees are not of a solitary nature”). Harker students participating as members of the California delegation were certainly as busy as bees, attending workshops and contest sessions, assemblies and sporting events. In addition to helping California take the top place in the spirit competition for medium-size delegations, the students brought home the following top 10 places. (Note: Students compete at the grade and Latin level they just completed in June.)
Felix Chen, grade 6, Level 1/2:
2nd in Ancient Geography, Greek Life and Literature, Roman History
3rd in Classical Art, Hellenic History, Latin Literature, Mythology
4th in Latin Derivatives, Reading Comprehension
5th in Academic Heptathlon
6th in Mottoes, Roman Life
7th in Greek Derivatives
8th in Latin Grammar
9th in Latin Vocabulary, Overall Academics
Felix also played on the California Novice Certamen (quiz bowl) team, which placed seventh.
Tiffany Chang, grade 8, Level 2:
4th in Reading Comprehension
5th in Sight Latin Reading
9th in Latin Literature, Mottoes
10th in Classical Greek, Essay
Tiffany played on the third-place Open Certamen Intermediate team.
(Note: Open Certamen teams are made of players from various states.)
Rupert Chen, grade 8, Level 2:
2nd in Sight Latin Reading
3rd in Reading Comprehension
5th in Essay
6th in Greek Life and Literature
Rupert played on the third-place Open Certamen Advanced team.
Michelle Jin, grade 8, Level 2:
2nd in Latin Literature
4th in Mottoes, Sight Latin Reading
6th in Classical Art, Reading Comprehension
8th in Essay
Lauren Liu, grade 8, Level 2:
4th in Reading Comprehension
8th in Essay
Edward Sun, grade 8, Level 2:
6th in Reading Comprehension
Jeffrey Fung, grade 11, Level 5+:
2nd in Reading Comprehension Prose, Sight Latin Reading (Poetry)
3rd in Reading Comprehension Poetry
4th in Ancient Geography, Classical Art, Greek Life and Literature
5th in Latin Literature, Latin Vocabulary, Mottoes, Roman Life, 100 Meters Senior Boys Track
6th in Classical Greek, Hellenic History, Mythology
8th in Latin Grammar
9th in Academic Heptathlon, Roman History
10th in Greek Derivatives
Jeffrey also played on the California Advanced Certamen (quiz bowl) team, which placed eighth.
Kyle Li, grade 11, Level 5+:
2nd in Hellenic History
3rd in Classical Greek
5th in Greek Life and Literature, Mythology
6th in Reading Comprehension Prose
7th in Reading Comprehension Poetry
9th in Greek Derivatives
Harker alumna Denzil (Sikka) Eden ‘09 was honored this week as one of Silicon Valley Business Journal’s 40 Under 40 award winners for 2019. Eden earned many accolades while at Harker, including being named an Intel (now Regeneron) Science Talent Search semifinalist.
Eden earned a master’s degree in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT and an MBA from Harvard University. In between, she worked at Microsoft for three years while teaching computer science at Foothill College in Los Altos and San Francisco State University.
Eden was working for San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo as his office’s technology and innovation advisor until this month, when she delved full time into her startup, Smarty A.I., an artificial intelligence executive-assistant product. Read all about her in the SVBJ article!
Harker alumna Denzil (Sikka) Eden ‘09 was honored this week as one of Silicon Valley Business Journal’s 40 Under 40 award winners for 2019. Eden earned many accolades while at Harker, including being named an Intel (now Regeneron) Science Talent Search semifinalist.
Eden earned a master’s degree in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT and an MBA from Harvard University. In between, she worked at Microsoft for three years while teaching computer science at Foothill College in Los Altos and San Francisco State University.
Eden was working for San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo as his office’s technology and innovation advisor until this month, when she delved full time into her startup, Smarty A.I., an artificial intelligence executive-assistant product. Read all about her in the SVBJ article!
Harker alumna Denzil (Sikka) Eden ‘09 was honored this week as one of Silicon Valley Business Journal’s 40 Under 40 award winners for 2019. Eden earned many accolades while at Harker, including being named an Intel (now Regeneron) Science Talent Search semifinalist.
Eden earned a master’s degree in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT and an MBA from Harvard University. In between, she worked at Microsoft for three years while teaching computer science at Foothill College in Los Altos and San Francisco State University.
Eden was working for San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo as his office’s technology and innovation advisor until this month, when she delved full time into her startup, Smarty A.I., an artificial intelligence executive-assistant product. Read all about her in the SVBJ article!
Earlier today, Krish Kapadia ’19 was named among the last round of 2019 National Merit scholarship winners, with a college-sponsored scholarship from Boston University. This win brings the total number of winners from Harker to 11. Congratulations to all who were recognized!
July 5, 2019:
Last month, the National Merit Scholarship Corporation announced the first round of 2019 college-sponsored National Merit scholarships. Recent graduates Nishka Ayyar, Joshua Broweleit and Amelia Huchley were named as winners in this round, and each will receive between $500 and $2,000 for as many as four years at the undergraduate level from the universities they plan to attend. Another round of college-sponsored scholarships will be announced on July 15.
May 9, 2019:
Seniors Ayush Alag, Enya Lu, Rithvik Panchapakesan, Akshay Ravoor, Katherine Tian, Alex Yu and Katherine Zhang were among the second round of winners announced in the 2019 National Merit Scholarship Program yesterday. Each student won a $2,500 scholarship from the National Merit Scholarship Program. The next two rounds of winners will be announced in June and July. Congratulations!
Sept. 25, 2018:
In mid-September, the National Merit Scholarship Corporation identified 68 Harker seniors as Commended Students in the 2019 National Merit Scholarship Competition. This designation places them among the 50,000 highest-scoring students (about 3 percent) from the 1.6 million who took the 2017 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Qualifying Test. Combined with the 43 seniors recently named semifinalists, this news brings the total number of seniors recognized by National Merit to 111, or 57 percent of the Class of 2019.
Harker’s 2019 National Merit Commended Students are:
Ryan Adolf, Hasan Awais, Sumantra Banerjee, Raymond Banke, Sayon Biswas, Donna Boucher, Alycia Cary, Nicole Chen, Ishani Cheshire, Shreya Dasari, Rithika Devarakonda, Nikhil Dharmaraj, Elizaveta Egorova, Aryana Far, Sukrit Ganesh, Carl Gross, Karan Gupta, Ria Gupta, Riya Gupta, Zachary Hoffman, Constance Horng, Jason Huang, Shafieen Ibrahim, Cameron Jones, Abhinav Joshi, Damini Kaushik, Arjun Kilaru, Prameela Kottapalli, Hannah Lak, Taylor Lam, Christopher Leafstrand, Angela Li, Katrina Liou, Erin Liu, Katrina Liu, Adrian Ma, Mathew Mammen, Ihita Mandal, David Melisso, Sara Min, Sonal Muthal, Suraj Pakala, Brian Park, Nishant Ravi, Alexander Rule, Viveka Saraiya, Karli Sharp, Kelly Shen, Andrea Simonian, Sian Smith, Alexander Teplov, Alyson Wang, Anna Wang, Catherine Wang, Cindy Wang, Clarissa Wang, Eric Wang, Gene Wang, Johnny Wang, Michael Wang, Richard Wang, Shania Wang, Henry Wong, Tiffany Wong, Zachary Wong, Kelsey Wu, Laura Wu and Tiffany Zhao.
Team Harker crushed it at the National Speech & Debate Tournament, where Haris Hosseini ’19, and Avi Gulati, a rising senior, nailed first and second places in original oratory. This event, billed as the largest academic competition in the world, is the culminating event of the speech and debate season. And there’s more good news: Alycia Cary ’19 made it to the semifinals for oratory; Andrew Sun, a rising junior, was 15th in congressional debate; and Jason Huang ‘19 made it to the semifinals of congressional debate.
“When these results are added to earlier results at the National Debate Coaches Association National Championship (sophomore Akshay Manglik’s top-three-in-the-nation finish in Lincoln-Douglas debate and Anusha Kuppahally, grade 12 and Maddie Huynh, grade 11, finishing fifth in policy debate), we have had quite the season!” noted Jennifer Achten, speech and debate chair.
Check out the feature article on this year’s speech and debate team in the spring/summer 2019 issue of Harker Magazine or right here, reprinted in Harker News!
Fourteen Harker students earned perfect scores on AP tests taken in the spring.
In economics, Ashwin Rammohan, grade 12, got perfect scores – no wrong answers – on both the macro- and microeconomics AP tests, one of only four students in the world to earn perfect scores on more than one AP exam! Enya Lu, grade 12, got a perfect score on the AP Macroeconomics test, making her one of only 31 worldwide to do so. Rithvik Panchapakesan, grade 12, was one of only 26 students worldwide who aced the AP Microeconomics test.
In computer science, there were 193 perfect scores worldwide and nearly 6 percent of them were from 11 Harker students. Arya Maheshwari, Michelle Si, Daniel Wang, Russell Yang and Bowen Yin, all grade 10; and David Feng, Finn Frankis, Alyssa Huang, Rashmi Iyer, Chaitanya Ravuri and Bryan Wang, all grade 11, all had perfect scores.
Only six schools worldwide had four or more students with perfect scores.
Harker students have turned in numerous perfect scores over the years. Search “perfect score” to find related articles in Harker News.
The business & entrepreneurship department launched two incubator courses this school year, and the young entrepreneurs have been going full tilt all year. Here is a quick look at the first year of these classes. Watch for a full length feature article on the classes in the winter issue of Harker Magazine in December 2019.
In summer 2017, Harker’s business and entrepreneurship department held an incubator class for high school entrepreneurs, one of the first in the nation. The class was an intensive, student-led and community-supported program in which student entrepreneurs received a seed grant, mentorship, academic curriculum and internal support from a student leadership team to help them develop and grow their startup companies. The class was so successful and well received it was converted into a full academic class for the 2018-19 school year. Read about the 2017 class here.
The two new academic incubator classes began in fall 2018: Honors Entrepreneurship: Startup Incubator 1 and Honors Entrepreneurship: Startup Incubator 2.
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. “Once students have validated their business concept hypothesis, they receive a seed grant to propel their business plan into reality, thereby learning business foundations in entrepreneurship, marketing, economics, finance and business operations firsthand. “
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 who visit the classes. Students also get out to visit with Bay Area startups and venture capitalists to experience entrepreneurship at the next level. “We had eight student companies complete the course this year and enrollment for next year is growing rapidly,” said Acheatel.
A key element in the classes was provided by Next47, a venture capital firm. The company supported the program as an essential part of education and donated $10,000 in venture funds. “We believe that entrepreneurial skills are life skills,” said Lak Ananth, CEO and managing partner of Next47. “Being passionate about an idea, taking the time to think through it, market it, and have the wherewithal to see it through – these are skills that are necessary to succeed in life. Exposing kids to this process is incredibly valuable. Even if these businesses don’t succeed, the process will inculcate in them the fire to keep getting better.”
Mentors are a critical element of the entire process and Phu Hoang has contributed his time to helping two of the ongoing ventures climb the ladder to success. He has been working with Mahi Kolla, grade 11, founder of The Minty Boutique, and Nishka Ayyar ’19 and Riya Gupta ’19, founders of of PromElle, to refine and channel their efforts as they expand their businesses.
“Mahi is an extraordinarily gifted young woman,” said Hoang. “She is hard-working, a very fast learner, and has tremendous passion for her company. It’s just so rare to see that at such a young age. What has been such a pleasure mentoring Mahi is that she can understand and soak in complex advice and suggestions and builds a plan to execute on them. I feel like my mentoring of Mahi is at the same level of strategic thinking and complexity as my mentoring of much older and more experienced founders of venture-backed companies.”
PromElle, Ayyar and Gupta’s venture, also has been around a couple of years. “PromElle is a more mature business than the Minty Boutique,” said Hoang, noting both women have now graduated. “They had done a lot of things right before I got involved. First of all, the idea of PromElle is brilliant and very needed. But they actually market-tested the concept by hosting a prom dress exchange at Harker when they were freshmen to test their idea. Most adult entrepreneurs don’t test their ideas that effectively. Once they got clear confirmation of the value that they can bring, they were able to get app development help at a very reasonable cost.”
Hoang, who holds a Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer science from the University of California, Berkeley, and was an early engineer at Yahoo, noted he has been working in technology all his life. “I enjoy working with entrepreneurs to help them realize their vision, build their products and grow their businesses. My son joined Harker as a freshman in 2017, and I got to see how advanced and entrepreneurial the kids are, so I reached out to Michael at some point to offer to contribute.”
This year, Incubator 1 startups included Sero, started by Cameron Jones ’19, an intelligent bike assistant with anti-theft and fitness tracking capabilities; PeerCoco, by Sayon Biswas ’19 and Nemo Yang ‘19, which is a peer-to-peer college consulting network for international high school students; GetTime, started by Claire Luo, grade 10, a student-focused time-management app that allows users to input tasks, set timers and track progress in a gamified manner; and PolyForm, the brainchild of Nakul Bajaj, grade 11, who is developing a platform for voters to answer polls and discuss policy at the local, state, and national level in civilized manner.
At the beginning of the year, these students identified problems they and other students face in daily life or that they see in the world. “They begin to assess the problem from a business perspective by looking at how these problems are currently being solved (competitive analysis) and identifying who has these problems (market analysis),” said Acheatel. Students then conduct customer interviews to validate their assumptions, then begin the solution ideation process to conceptualize their proposed solution, noted Acheatel.
In February, students pulled their projects together and pitched to a panel of investors for funding to develop a prototype of their product, known as the minimum viable product (MVP). “All four [Incubator 1] companies successfully raised seed funding and have since developed their prototypes,” Acheatel noted. “Now that the entrepreneurs have had three months to develop their products, they will pitching to investors in late May for funding to fully launch their companies,” he said.
There were also four Incubator 2 companies. The Minty Boutique, a luxe stationery company that utilizes unique designs and functional products to cater to the #BOSS lifestyle; PromElle, the first peer-to-peer marketplace for teen fashion where teen girls can lend/rent or buy/sell formal, party and everyday wear; Nanoseed, developed by Jason Huang ’19 and Suraj Pakala ’19, a nonprofit organization in the field of microfinance that empowers rural Chinese farmers to form cooperatives and build sustainable businesses; and PillBot, being developed by Johnny Wang ’19 as an automated solution to medicine dispensary with a tamper-proof design and overdose protection.
Each Incubator 2 company pitched at sHarker Tank – BECon for $15K in prize money provided by venture firm Next47. Read all about that effort here.
PromElle took first place at sHarker Tank BEcon and presented at the Association for Corporate Growth Silicon Valley’s 2019 GROW awards. Officers are currently in communication with SharkTank about appearing on their show.
The Minty Boutique took second place at sHarker Tank BEcon and was written up in a blog post by Stukent. Kolla is excited about the year’s progress. “In August through September, we launched our first iteration of our academic planners which sold out within a week,” she said. “From there, we reached out Harker to become the new manufacturer of the Harker academic planners. We are currently working with the freshmen class dean and the Office of Communication to finalize this partnership.”
PillBot took third place at sHarker Tank BEcon and received funding and support from various nationwide competitions. Wang found the class valuable for his development needs. “The class provided a good framework for the students to build and grow their businesses,” he said. “The curriculum gives us enough flexibility so we can focus on individual business goals. The majority of instruction is not done by lecturing but one-on-one mentoring with both teachers within the B&E department and external mentors. By leveraging on the Harker alumni/parent network, we are able to learn much more than just listening to lectures.”
Nanoseed earned fourth place at sHarker Tank BEcon and has grown to more than 20 branches. It held a benefit concert that raised $9,000 to fund loans. “To me though, what was most memorable about the class was the variety of people we get to interact with,” said Huang, “from lawyers and mentors coming in to talk to us, helping us with legal or financial issues, to us being able to pitch directly to real investors who provided valuable feedback on how we could improve our organization.” Read this 2017 article on the company’s inception.
The students also pitched to Ananth and principals at Next47’s headquarters in Palo Alto and visited Tesla and Manticore Games.
The class continues in the fall with new and returning entrepreneurs. Watch for the comprehensive article in the winter issue of Harker Magazine, coming out in December!
Harker’s A Quiz Bowl team – juniors Rohan Cherukuri, Jeffrey Fung, Kyle Li and Arun Sundaresan – spent Memorial Day weekend in Atlanta, where they finished in the top 5 percent at the High School National Championship Tournament for National Academic Quiz Tournaments. Coached by Sundaresan’s father, Sankar Sundaresan, the team tied for 19th place overall out of 336 teams. After qualifying for the playoffs, the team notched three straight wins before losing a close contest to Detroit Catholic Central, historically a very strong performer at the national level.
In another notable achievement, sophomore Daniel Wang received the Sophomore Rising Star award for his performance at the event.
The Class of 2019’s final hours as Harker students were memorable ones, as Thursday’s graduation ceremony brought together families, friends and faculty to celebrate a major milestone in the seniors’ lives.
Cheers went up from the crowd at the Mountain Winery as the seniors arrived to take their seats during the processional to the familiar swell of Elgar’s “Pomp and Circumstance,” performed by the Harker Chamber Orchestra.
Following a performance of “The Star-Spangled Banner” by the 2019 Graduation Chorus and a welcome message from Upper Division Head Butch Keller, Kaushik Shivakumar ’19 took the podium to deliver the valedictorian speech to his fellow graduates. Shivakumar implored his classmates to use the intellectual curiosity they gained at Harker. “If there’s one thing we should take away from our high school years, it wouldn’t be what we’ve learned,” he said. “Instead, it would be the desire to learn more, which manifests itself as curiosity. In order to thrive within the world we find ourselves, we have to ask questions. Lots of them. And in particular, we must never ever hesitate to ask the question, ‘Why?'”
Shivakumar’s speech received enthusiastic applause and was followed by another performance from the 2019 Graduation Chorus, this time of “I Shall Pass This Way But Once,” written by conductor Susan Nace with lyrics by Etienne De Grellet.
The Hon. John B. Owens ’85 was this year’s keynote speaker. Owens’ said his memories of Harker have had a profound impact on him, as evidenced by the many teachers he remembered and thanked, including longtime math teacher Pat Walsh and the late beloved history teacher John Near. Owens noted that while many schools offer a good education, Harker set itself apart by also teaching him to be a good member of society. “What Harker taught me at the end of the day are things you don’t really learn in books,” he said. “[Harker] taught me how to be a good citizen.”
The 2019 Graduation Chorus then gave its final performance of the evening, singing “The Harker School Song,” before Head of School Brian Yager gave his farewell address.
Yager gave the audience a brief retelling of the journeys of Richard Henry Dana Jr., who in the 1800s explored the sparsely populated area that would later become known as California. Dana’s portrait of California was very different from the populous state known today, and with growth has come many problems waiting to be solved by the next generation. Like California, he said, Harker has also experienced massive changes in the 125 years since it was founded. “Its journey, like the journey of the state in which we live, has been a remarkable one,” he said. “It has also been one built on hope … the hope that our efforts to educate you will enable you to appreciate the world of yesterday, love the world of tomorrow, and that your fantasy will be to stand in a world 50, 60, 70 – maybe even 125 – years from now that is one you can say with pride and joy that you helped make happen.”
The graduates then received their diplomas one at a time as their loved ones cheered from the stands. Once all members of the class were seated, they symbolically moved their caps’ tassels from the right to the left and cheered loudly as they flung their caps into the air. The ceremony officially ended with the traditional releasing of doves, eliciting shouts of awe as the beautiful birds flew overhead.