This year’s collection of papers written by John Near and Mitra Family endowment scholars have some fascinating titles. Each year, the scholars are honored at a reception in the Nichols Hall auditorium, celebrating the completion of their intensive research and writing projects.
At the reception, each student talked about the journey to self-knowledge that comes from writing such a complex paper. Each was generous in acknowledging the program’s value to their growth and in praising the mentors who helped them succeed. Each scholar had vivid memories of the road to completing their paper.
2018-19 Near Scholars:
Logan Bhamidipaty, mentored by Byron Stevens and Lauri Vaughan: “Plain Language: Henry George, Denis Kearney, and the Anti-Chinese Movement in Nineteenth-Century California”
Prameela Kottapalli, mentored by Mark Janda and Sue Smith: “Deliberately Unafraid: Audre Lorde as a Pioneer of Intersectional Feminism”
Leon Lu, mentored by Carol Green, Susan Nace and Meredith Cranston: “Soul of the Jazz Resistance: Charles Mingus and the Civil Rights Movement”
Kelsey Wu, mentored by Kelly Horan and Sue Smith: “The Loneliness Disease: Challenges of First-Generation Chinese-American Parents of Autistic Children”
2018-19 Mitra Scholars:
Nikhil Dharmaraj, mentored by Clifford Hull and Meredith Cranston: “The Evolution of Evolution: Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura and Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species”
Ryan Guan, mentored by Ruth Meyer and Meredith Cranston: “The Rattle of the Bones: Reading T. S. Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’ as a Response to World War I”
Haris Hosseini, mentored by Andrea Milius, Josh Martinez and Sue Smith: “Unveiled: The Appropriation of Afghan Women in the War on Terror”
Katherine Tian, mentored by Damon Halback, Chris Spenner and Lauri Vaughan: “Does God Play Dice? Understanding the Role of Uncertainty at the Intersection of Antirealist Philosophy and Quantum Mechanics”
Preschoolers had a great Earth Day last week! Parent volunteers were key to making the day special: one parent volunteer talked about climate change and read “The Lorax” by Dr. Seuss to the class. Other parent volunteers stood by to demonstrate various ecological investigations for our students to explore: solar, wind and water energy stations, a water filtration station and germination station. It was a great week for students, parents and teachers!
Preschoolers had a great Earth Day last week! Parent volunteers were key to making the day special: one parent volunteer talked about climate change and read “The Lorax” by Dr. Seuss to the class. Other parent volunteers stood by to demonstrate various ecological investigations for our students to explore: solar, wind and water energy stations, a water filtration station and germination station. It was a great week for students, parents and teachers!
Preschoolers had a great Earth Day last week! Parent volunteers were key to making the day special: one parent volunteer talked about climate change and read “The Lorax” by Dr. Seuss to the class. Other parent volunteers stood by to demonstrate various ecological investigations for our students to explore: solar, wind and water energy stations, a water filtration station and germination station. It was a great week for students, parents and teachers!
Freshmen David Dai and Rishab Parthasarathy were recently selected to be two of 20 high school students on the 2019 U.S. Physics Team. Each year, the American Association of Physics Teachers selects team members from the top scorers on the USA Physics Exam, who are then invited to a boot camp at the University of Maryland, College Park. Five of these students will then be chosen for the traveling team for the International Physics Olympiad in Tel Aviv, Israel.
The 2019 middle school Green Team – sixth graders Summer Adler, Natalie Liu, Genieve Malinen and Claire Zhao – has been hard at work this year advocating for the end of single-use plastics and an increase in recycling of all plastic waste. Because much of our plastic waste ends up in the ocean, the team is concerned with the effects on marine life, from sea birds filling their stomachs – and those of their babies – with indigestible plastic and dying of malnutrition, to fish who mistake tiny bits of colored microplastics as their natural food source, to sea turtles and whales becoming entangled in plastic waste. The team has worked hard to learn about and share with their friends the effects of human activity on the planet’s ecosystems.
In addition to creating inspirational posters and displaying them at the middle school campus, the team participated in the nationwide Plastic Film Recycling Challenge, collecting and recycling more than 300 pounds of plastic film during the five-month challenge. The Green Team managed to increase the middle school community’s recycling of a material difficult to process by waste haulers and recyclers, and effectively communicated the importance of recycling to their fellow students, families, faculty and staff – who all participated in the team’s plastic film collection.
With Earth Day in mind, the Green Team learned more about Earth’s marine environments and the important role that healthy coral plays in maintaining these ecosystems. With a healthy coral reef being the backbone of a thriving ocean, they further discovered the surprising impact that sunscreen has had on the planet’s oceans and that the toxic ingredients oxybenzone and octinoxate have adversely affected coral reefs by poisoning fish, sea urchins, shrimp and baby corals. Widespread coral distress and reef bleaching has been a significant global consequence.
The team shared this information about sunscreen and its effects at the 2019 Earth Day celebration on April 19. The entire student body also participated in an extended advisory meeting that focused on protecting coral reefs globally. They took part in a letter writing campaign that petitioned the FDA to ban oxybenzone and octinoxate in sunscreens nationwide. They further learned that switching to reef-safe sunscreen has a huge impact on coral reef health and were given free reef-safe clear zinc sunscreen sticks at the Green Team’s Earth Day booth, generously donated by Babo Botanicals.
The inspirational story behind Babo Botanicals’ founder is evidenced by her passion for healthy marine ecosystems, beekeeping, sustainable agriculture, nutrition and teaching. A graduate of Harvard, Kate Solomon developed Babo Botanicals with children and families in mind. We are very grateful for the company’s sunscreen donation and the opportunity has provided to share the importance of using reef-safe sunscreens with students and families.
Green Team members have shown their passion for a healthy planet and truly gotten their hands dirty by learning about and maintaining a compost bin on campus, growing vegetables from seeds and replanting the beautiful Harker “H” garden by the school entrance. Maintaining both the flower garden and vegetable patch will be the team’s focus for the remainder of the school year, while continuing to campaign against single-use plastics.
Harker preschoolers had a more-than-just-Earth Day moment as they enjoyed the world of beanstalks today. STEM specialist Robyn Stone expounded on the beanstalk they have grown in the preschool farm, while Sara Mccloskey, preschool librarian, created a beanstalk to go with her storytelling. The students made giants and Jacks and other items to hang on the beanstalk. Too much fun!
Nine Harker students were presented with National Speech & Debate Association Academic All American awards this month. Nikhil Dharmaraj, grade 12; Avi Gulati, grade 11 Anusha Kuppahally, grade 12; Annie Ma, grade 11; Sachin Shah, grade 11; Kelly Shen, grade 12; Nikki Solanki, grade 11; Clarissa Wang, grade 12; and Cindy Wang, grade 12 were honored for their “academic rigor, competitive speech and debate success and personal excellence.”
Fewer than 1,000 students are awarded out of more than 141,000 student members of the National Speech& Debate Association, which puts these ten students in the top one percent of all student members, nationwide.
To earn the award, students must have completed at least five semesters of high school, earned the degree of Superior Distinction in the organization’s Honor Society, achieved a certain level of GPA, and demonstrated outstanding character and leadership. Watch for the full story of this year’s speech and debate team in the summer issue of Harker Magazine. It’s been a great ride!
Agata Sorotokin ’15 has been named a 2019 Paul & Daisy Soros Fellow for her drive, creativity, intellectual spirit and commitment to the values at the heart of the United States Constitution and Bill of Rights.
The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans support outstanding immigrants and children of immigrants who are pursuing a graduate education in the United States. The organization selects 30 individuals a year, and each receives up to $90,000 toward his or her graduate education. This year’s fellows, 20 of whom are women, were selected from a pool of 1,767 applicants from across the country. Sorotokin will use her fellowship to pursue a master’s degree in music at SUNY Stony Brook. Read her bio, here.
Past fellows include former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy; California Surgeon General Nadine Burke Harris; Stanford artificial intelligence leader Fei-Fei Li; Lieutenant Governor of Washington Cyrus Habib; composer Paola Prestini; computational biologist Pardis Sabeti; award-winning writer Kao Kalia Yang; and more than 600 other New American leaders. The list also includes several other Harker alumni: Suchita Nety ’13 and Angela Ma ’14 in 2018,Ashvin Swaminathan ’13 in 2017 and Daniel Kim ’09 in 2014.
Senior Logan Bhamidipaty was recently awarded a scholarship from the U.S. Department of State’s National Security Language Initiative for Youth (NSLI-Y), which funds a full academic year abroad for students studying languages judged as important by the State Department. Following graduation, Bhamidipaty plans to take a gap year to study Mandarin in Beijing before matriculating to Stanford.
Bhamidipaty also was recognized last month with a Congressional Award for his volunteer work with the San Francisco-Marin Food Bank, and as an immigration intern with Catholic Charities USA. He also was honored for his devotion to becoming fluent in Mandarin, and for studying the history and culture of Japan’s Kansai region during the country’s Edo period. Bhamidipaty is scheduled to travel to Washington, D.C., in June for a special ceremony attended by awardees and members of the U.S. Congress.