This week, the upper school show choir Downbeat released a special video for its annual holiday outreach tour, which typically takes place on the first Friday of December. “For the last 25 years, Downbeat has toured all over the Bay Area, bringing holiday joy to preschools, senior centers, dementia units, Grace Cathedral’s homeless lunch clients, the children’s cancer ward at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital and more,” said Laura Lang-Ree, upper school performing arts chair. In addition to performing, they also bring gifts, cookies and spend time chatting with residents.
Due to safety concerns caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the tour could not be held this year, but the students felt the tradition should continue in some form. “Downbeat decided it was important to continue the tradition for all of our regular outreach places and spread even more joy, as so many people are alone over the holidays due to the pandemic,” Lang-Ree said. Downbeat members spent considerable time over the fall semester creating the video, including the sound editing, arranging and narration. It will be sent to various Bay Area schools, youth centers, hospitals and care facilities. Members of the Harker community can view the video by logging in to the Harker portal and visiting the Performing Arts page.
On Sept. 25, CareerConnect held a Harker alumni panel via Zoom. Three alumni, Haley Tran ’17, Lucas Wang ’17 and Vignesh Panchanatham ’18, talked about things students should know before graduating from high school. They discussed founding and joining clubs, finding summer opportunities, their college experiences and more. In addition, they answered many questions from students.
“This event helped me learn more about the little niches in school and outside of school to do before graduating high school,” said Jessica Zhou, grade 10, commented. “Fostering a connection with teachers in the subjects you are interested in can help you down the road when doing events or projects related to it and making sure to do what you enjoy is extremely important.”
The event was a great success and helped students learn about how to get involved in the Harker community and make the most of high school!
This story was submitted by Gianna Chan, grade 11.
From Oct. 19-23, five teams participated in California DECA’s business pitch challenge, an entrepreneurship video competition modeled after the entrepreneurship events in DECA conferences. Competitors were required to create a new business idea and record a 10-minute presentation about their product or service.
Three Harker students, Harshini Chaturvedula, Anjali Yella and Jasmine Ishikawa, all grade 9, won second place with their app Oasis, which provides detailed information on COVID-19 statistics and safety tips. The app features an interactive map displaying local COVID case numbers, as well as a user rating system for cities and locations such as malls and restaurants focusing on three main areas: mask usage, social distancing and sanitation. “Going into the challenge, we mainly just hoped to receive some feedback and did not expect to win anything,” Yella said. “We worked continuously on our project and received feedback from our parents and DECA mentors, using this to improve our innovation. We learned how to distribute work amongst ourselves and also use teamwork to complete the project on time.”
Congratulations to Harshini, Anjali and Jasmine and all of the participants!
Over the past month, three Harker student athletes were recognized on the 49ers Cal-Hi Sports TV show for their excellence on and off the field. Natalie Vo, grade 12, was featured for her outstanding Harker golf career and her bright future; Vayun Tiwari, grade 11, showed off his award-winning talent for bird photography; and Ashley Barth, grade 11, shared her inspiring story of battling cancer and her relationship with Camp Okizu. Check out all the stories of these outstanding Eagles below:
Earlier this week, Amiti Uttarwar ‘10 was named to the annual Forbes 30 Under 30 list in the Finance category. Uttarwar was recognized for being the first known woman to become a Bitcoin Core contributor and becoming one of the few paid developers of bitcoin’s code when she was awarded a joint grant of $150,000 from OKCoin and HDR Global in June. A profile of Uttarwar published by Forbes in July chronicled her life as the child of Indian immigrants who found a passion for community service at a young age, eventually becoming a board member of Girls For A Change, a San Jose-based organization that encourages girls to develop local projects that benefit their communities.
After graduating from Harker, she attended Carnegie Mellon University, majoring in information systems. She eventually landed at Simbi, where she discovered her love of cryptocurrency. After a stint at a company called Coinbase, Uttarwar took a residency at Chaincode Labs in 2019 to become a Bitcoin Core developer, working directly with bitcoin’s underlying code. Her work at Chaincode resulted in a sponsorship by the Hong Kong-based crypto company Xapo and the landmark OKCoin/HDR Global joint grant.
Senior Hari Bhimaraju recently published a paper in the Biometrics & Biostatistics International Journal, a peer-reviewed journal specializing in biological sciences and public health. Her paper, titled “Low-cost enhancement of facial mask filtration to prevent transmission of COVID-19,” examines a variety of low-cost masks to determine their effectiveness in containing the spread of COVID-19. “COVID-19 disproportionately affects people in low-income communities, who often lack the resources to acquire appropriate personal protective equipment and tend to lack the flexibility to shelter in place due to their public-facing occupations,” reads the abstract to the paper.
Bhimaraju’s research was part of a summer internship, but due to safety concerns, she had to conduct all of her research at home. “This is a great example of how resourceful our students are in creating independent research opportunities for themselves,” said Anita Chetty, upper school science chair. “But moreover, this is of course a very important piece of work that has societal implications.”
In the segment, Lu shares his motivation for co-founding YAPA, which stems from his own love of learning and the desire to foster that love in younger kids. “I’m someone who really enjoys learning, and this would be a missed opportunity if we didn’t do something like that,” Lu told CBS.
The group’s performance of Ysaye Barnwell’s “Spiritual” was recorded and posted to YouTube as part of the annual C# Harvest Concert, which took place virtually this year. The event is organized by CMU C#, the vocal club that oversees D Flat Singers and other vocal ensembles. “Since holding a live concert wasn’t an option this year, we decided to make it virtual,” said Banga. “The structure of the concert was the same as usual in that we had acts by C#’s performance groups and other CMU a cappella groups, and we also held auditions open to the entire CMU community for the smaller group acts.”
Adapting to the virtual format meant finding new ways to rehearse and put together a performance. “We meet regularly using Zoom, but the lag makes it impossible to sing as a group,” Banga said. “So, we spend most of our rehearsals talking about musicality, learning new techniques and giving individual feedback.”
To create the performance for YouTube, the singers each recorded themselves singing their parts along with the conductor’s recording. “Afterwards, the rest of the choir recorded themselves while listening to the section leader recordings,” said Banga. “This way, we could blend with each other even when we weren’t in the same room.”
The decision to support 1Hood stemmed from the wave of massive protests that took place this year in response to police killings of Black Americans. “The Black Lives Matter movement impacted us all so much this year, and like many others, we were extremely upset and frustrated by the injustices in our country,” Banga noted. “After a great deal of reflection on what we could do as an org, we realized that there is a tremendous lack of diversity in mainstream Western choral music.” As such, Banga and the D Flat Singers’ conductor decided to sing pieces by living Black composers for the entirety of the semester. “We’re currently working on commissioning a piece by a Black composer for next semester,” Banga said. “C# also committed to donating all proceeds from our concerts to BLM related organizations, and 1Hood was a perfect match since they’re a Pittsburgh-based organization that supports Black artists and activists.”
Junior Riyaa Randhawa was recently published in The Milbank Quarterly, a peer-reviewed journal that covers health care policy. The paper, written during a summer internship with Harold Pollack of the University of Chicago, argues that the United States and countries in Central and South America must work together to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Even though this was not a straight science paper, a lot of the skills I used throughout the process of writing this paper were from [upper school science teacher Chris Spenner’s] class,” she said. “The practice and real research papers I wrote in class…really benefited me here!”
On Thursday, the National Scholastic Press Association named the upper school newspaper The Winged Post a Pacemaker Award finalist in the High School Newspaper/Newsmagazine category. The newspaper is one of 60 finalists chosen from 190 students publications that entered the competition. The 24 Pacemaker winners will be announced at a virtual ceremony on Nov. 21.
Three teams of judges exhaustively reviewed all of this year’s entries, which fell into three categories: Middle School/Junior High Newspaper/Newsmagazine, High School Newspaper/Newsmagazine and Specialty magazine. Publications were evaluated in areas including coverage, writing, design and photography.