On Aug. 22, the dream of opening a new science and technology center became reality as the Harker Benefactors (families making gifts of $100,000 or more) gathered together to dedicate the five centers that make up this new facility. The five Centers, named after the families who made Visionary gifts of $1,000,000 to help fund these individual Centers, are proudly named: The Jain Technology Center, The Pawlowski Chemistry Center, The Krishnamurthi Physics Center, The Madala Biology Center and The Ringold Research Center.
Over 120 guests attended the gala, which began with Askok Krishnamurthi thanking the teachers for their work with Harker students before making the inaugural swing of the Foucault pendulum in the building’s rotunda, setting it in perpetual motion and signifying the opening of the building. Guests were then invited to tour the building where teachers were happily showing their new classrooms and labs.
The 52,000-square-foot “green” center, which broke ground in May 2007, is designed to be fully LEED certified; the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) is a Green Building Rating System.
As guests were summoned to the auditorium, Christopher Nikoloff, head of school, was joined on stage by the Visionary Donors, and thanks were extended for their incredible generosity. “You all can feel really good about what you have helped make possible and this building will have a major
impact for our students, our teachers and our program,” Nikoloff said.
The Jain Technology Center was dedicated first. “Navin and Madhu Jain made the very first Visionary gift to the Cornerstones Campaign approximately nine years ago. Navin and Madhu are involved as volunteers, including serving on our Parent Technology Committee and being a member of the Board of Trustees, and it is with great joy that we dedicate the Jain Technology Center tonight,” Nikoloff said.
The Pawlowski Chemistry Center is named for Visionary Donor Brian Pawlowski, who made his gift when his son Nic was in the upper school. “Brian continues to be a mentor to our 11th grade students and we are very grateful to Brian for his early leadership in the Senior Parent Appreciation Giving
Program,” Nikoloff said, as he thanked Pawlowski and his wife, Aki Ueno.
Gordon and Tanya Ringold were among the first donors to the Cornerstones Campaign when Harker first began the expansion to a K-Gr. 12 school. During Phase III of the campaign, the Ringolds made an additional
commitment to the school, becoming Visionary Donors. The Research Center was dedicated in their honor.
Ashok Krishnamurthi and Deepa Iyengar were next to be recognized for their visionary gift. The Physics Center in the building is named in memory of Krishnamurthi’s father, who passed away a few years ago.
“Ashok has not only been a major benefactor, but he co-chaired this phase of the Capital Campaign along with John and Christine Davis,” Nikoloff noted.
The final center dedication was for the Biology Center. Nikoloff: “Srini and Durga Madala just kept getting more and more excited about what they were seeing happening as Phase III began to come together. They committed to making a gift early in this phase and they kept increasing
the amount of their gift as they became more and more excited about the benefits that it was going to provide to our students and teachers. We are grateful for their visionary commitment and for naming the Biology Center.”
Also being honored for their Visionary gift were Krish and Nina Panu. Much of the success of the record-breaking year in annual giving (bringing in $1.5 million and 80 percent parent participation) is due directly to the Panus, who joined the Madala family in a matching gift challenge that resulted in 153 families making gifts who had not donated the year before, and 418 families increasing their gifts to the campaign.
After this moving ceremony, Nikoloff turned his thanks to the Gold Circle Benefactors, Shirish and Archana Sathaye, and Marcia and Chris Riedel, Sehat Sutardja and Weili Dai and Sally Anderson and presented them each with a commemorative book highlighting the process of the construction of the entire Phase III project.
The upper school Orchestra is going to New York! The group, led by director Chris Florio, will travel in April to compete in the National Orchestra Cup at Alice Tully Hall in Lincoln Center. The hall just completed a $100 million renovation and is considered one of the top performance halls in the country.
“I have wanted to take the orchestra to New York for a couple of years,” said Florio. “Through research, I found out about the National Orchestra Cup and decided that competing in a newly renovated space like Alice Tully Hall would be a great opportunity.”
The group had to apply and pass a review before being green-lighted for the competition, said Florio. “There are several schools entered this year that I am familiar with, and their programs are going to be very challenging to compete against,” he noted.
Although the orchestra traveled to Eastern Europe in 2005 with a score of students, and to Paris in 2006 with almost twice that number, “this will be the first orchestra competition for Harker,” said Florio. “We will be taking 68 students to perform. We have had chamber groups participate in competitions in the past but those were with only a handful of students.”
One of those 68 students will be violinist Sonya Huang, Gr. 11. She started playing at Harker eight years ago. “I started off learning under Toni Woodruff, a Bucknall strings coach at Harker,” said Huang. “About a year later, I switched to an outside private teacher, and I’m currently studying under Li Lin, a teacher at the San Francisco Conservatory.”
Huang has been in first the middle school, then the upper school orchestras since Gr. 4. She made the Eastern European tour, seeing Prague, Vienna and Budapest with the upper school Orchestra while she was still in Gr. 7 and went on the Paris tour in Gr. 9.
“I’m looking forward to attending its third-ever tour,” said Huang. “We attend the CMEA (California Music Educators’ Association) orchestra competition every year, but that is a relatively small-scale competition. I’ve never par ticipated in a large orchestra competition before, and I think that this will be a great experience for all Harker orchestra members. It’s really such an honor that Harker has been chosen to participate in the National Orchestra Cup this year.”
Huang noted it won’t be all work. “We’ve scheduled many fun activities to do in New York, ranging from watching a performance by the New York Philharmonic, to touring New York landmarks, to shopping on Fifth Avenue,” she said. Then there is the event. “It’s going to be really thrilling to play in that famous venue, as many famous orchestras and musicians have played on that very stage. I’m especially looking forward to the competition because it’s a great chance to showcase our orchestra’s talent and hard work from the entire year.
“We’ll be playing some Copland, as well as a piece I originally recommended to Mr. Florio, Smetana’s “Ma Vlast.” To me, the latter is an especially beautiful work, and I love everything about the piece, from the flowing melody in the first violin sections to the dance-like motifs later on in the piece. So performing “Ma Vlast” on stage will definitely be one of the highlights of the competition for me! Of course, it would be great to win a trophy, but regardless of whether we win any awards, I believe that we’ll all gain extremely valuable performance experience, and of course, cherished tour memories,” Huang added.
It’s early days, and the group hasn’t felt the pinch of time yet. “There hasn’t been that much added pressure,” said Huang. “Sure, we’ve had our fair share of bad rehearsals, but we’ve also had many, many successful rehearsals as well. Mr. Florio hasn’t star ted tearing out his hair yet at our intonation, so I’d say we’re on the right track!”
The orchestra will have 25 minutes to perform and Florio selected Bedrich Smetena’s “The Moldau” from “Ma Vlast” and Aaron Copland’s “Saturday Night Waltz” and “Hoe Down” from “Rodeo” for their program, and “the toughest par t is definitely in the preparation of all the pieces,” said Huang. “When working on orchestral masterworks such as the Smetana, it’s difficult, with so many members of the orchestra, to convey the single unified idea that the conductor wants. Everyone has a slightly different interpretation of the piece at first, but we try our best to match up to the conductor’s interpretation of the music. And of course, sight-reading and learning the notes is difficult when we first receive the music, but eventually, with lots of hard practice, we’ll have the pieces down.”
Florio is intent on challenging his students. “I believe that Harker students work best when they have a competitive drive (so) I am anxious to see how far we can push ourselves, and how we stack up against other groups around the country.” Watch for updates on this adventure!
Students got an early look at Nichols Hall’s multimedia room in September. When finished, the room will be used to film video presentations and record live audio.
The room currently features a large green screen that can be used to display images behind subjects being filmed. It also contains two high-definition cameras for filming at multiple angles.
Fred Triefenbach, US assistant director of instructional technology, said a wooden floor would eventually be added so that dance students can use the room to film routines. A high-end computer containing the video editing software Final Cut Pro and the industry-standard recording suite ProTools is also on its way. Drapes will be added to absorb sound and cut down on reverberation, and equipment such as high-quality microphones, boom stands and an audio board have already arrived. The room will also be fitted with a new lighting array to reduce heat production. Triefenbach is currently researching different lighting solutions to determine what will best suit the room’s needs. A window has been installed between the multimedia room and the adjacent classroom, which will serve as a control room when recording equipment arrives and is properly configured.
After providing a brief summary of his plans for the room, Triefenbach had US music teacher Susan Nace direct her ensembles Cantilena and Camerata in renditions of “The Star-Spangled Banner” and Pierre Passereau’s “Il est bel et bon” to test out the acoustics.
Harker students and alumni had the unique opportunity to see one of their own compete in the summer Olympics in Beijing, as MS alumna Andrea Nott ’96 represented the U.S. in the synchronized swimming event. Nott, whose team finished fifth overall in Beijing, discovered her love for the sport at the age of nine, and has been named a U.S. Synchronized Swimming All-American for seven years — since 1999. She was selected as an alternate for the Athens games in 2004.
Surprisingly, Nott said she didn’t feel much pressure despite making her first Olympic appearance. “We did a lot of mental preparation, including detailed visualizations and simulations,” she said. “So, when we were waiting to go out to perform I actually felt surprisingly calm.” She also said that her main goal was to put on the best performance of her career. “I wanted to peak and amaze people at the Olympics,” said Nott. “I think our team did that.”
Nott is the daughter of Debra Nott, Harker’s director of nursing and, following a decompression period, Andrea resurfaced in October to join her mom, who went to Beijing with her, at the Harker Family Picnic. The swimmer noted one of the most remarkable experiences of the games was watching the opening ceremonies.
“A lot of Olympians had told me beforehand that it was their favorite part of the Olympics, but I couldn’t quite grasp how amazing it would be to see them light the torch until I saw it,” she recalled. But above all, it was the opportunity to participate in the games that made the biggest impression. “I had been looking forward to the Olympics for so long that I really didn’t want to realize after closing ceremonies that I had let it all go by too fast,” said Nott. “I knew beforehand that I would be retiring from synchronized swimming after the games, so when I watched the torch light in opening ceremonies, I knew it would be a once-in-a-lifetime occasion.”
For those aspiring to reach the stars, Nott says the key ingredient is determination. “Natural talent is a great gift, but it can only take you so far,” she says. “Hard work and tenacity are what will get you there in the end, and the reward will feel even greater.
Not quite a blog but not far from it, Debra Nott, Harker’s director of nursing, is emailing from Beijing where she is both providing moral support for daughter, Andrea, a Harker alumna and U.S. synchronized swimming team member, and “discovering” China. Here are her illuminating, periodic missives to friends and family. We’ll add updates, so watch for a changing headline!
August 18 We attended our first synchro competition yesterday. It was duet tech and Andrea and Christina (Jones) were terrific! They are sitting in fifth place and hope to move up in free competition, today, but places don’t change often in Synchro. So far, every country is in the same slot they earned at the last World Championships, in Australia. It was a wonderful moment when they walked out on the pool deck. I had to keep telling myself that I was at the Olympics and our daughter was indeed swimming in the biggest competition in the world. After waiting for this for so many years, it’s going to take a little while for it to seem real. I’m taking a cue from Andrea and trying to be in the moment. She said in her blog that she didn’t want to find herself in closing ceremonies wondering how it all went so fast. The Water Cube is just as spectacular as it looks on TV. The bubbles you see on the outside are visible inside. The best part, other than watching Andrea swim there, is that the air conditioning actually works! That’s a first for an indoor pool.
After Andrea swam, we headed over to the McDonalds located in the Olympic Green. The food is the same as McDonalds in the U.S., but that’s where the similarity stopped. There were about 200 people massed outside. They let us inside in groups of about 100. Remember the Chinese campaign to get people used to lining up instead of duking it out to get to the head of the line? There was a program to encourage them to practice queuing on the 11th of every month because 11 looks like two people standing in line. Let me tell you, that didn’t work. I was squished by people a foot shorter than me and received more than a couple of elbows in the McRibs. That will be our last visit to the Olympic McDonalds!
Since we are living in an apartment, we need to purchase supplies, so we went to the most popular store in the neighborhood – Walmart. It is similar to Walmart in the US, with a few Chinese twists. As we entered, a cheerful young woman greeted us in Chinese. They have the usual displays with those happy faces designating low prices. Then you come across the seafood department. It looks just like the aquarium section at Petco, except here when you buy the fish, you don’t take it home and name it Bubbles. People walk up to a tank, point out a fish and the fish guy scoops it out, pops in in a plastic bag and you toss it in the cart still wiggling.
I just saw a commercial on TV suggesting that a vacation in Inner Mongolia would be lovely. I don’t know how that escaped my bucket list. We are definitely not in Kansas anymore!
The adventure and the competition continue!
August 16 We are living and moving around like real Beijingers now. Traffic here is regulated partly by traffic signals and party by the size and price of the vehicle. Busses and trucks have first priority, followed by vans, cars, bicycles and pedestrians in that order. Vehicles use their horn to warn cyclists and pedestrians that they will be flattened if they don’t move. Beijingers casually step to the side when honked at and we are starting to do so as well, without getting that “fear of imminent death” expression first. Although the vehicles do stop at stop lights, pedestrians and cyclists generally ignore them. When we cross a street on a green light, cars turning right and left cut through packs of pedestrians like a golden retriever going after pigeons. We scatter in enough directions to let the cars through, then proceed on across the street.
Before we came to Beijing, I saw pieces on TV showing scores of taxi drivers going to English classes every Saturday. There are 67,000 taxis in Beijing and I suspect that the 30 or so I saw in English class are the only ones who regularly attended. When we called a taxi to go the Bird’s Nest for Opening Ceremonies, we confidently hopped in, knowing our driver had been practicing “Welcome to Beijing. Where would you like to go?” We went for short and simple and said to him “Olympics.” He looked at us like we were crazy and said a lot of words in Chinese. I figure he was either saying “Could you be more specific as to your choice of venue?” or “This is going to be the longest 17 days of my life!” After that we always have our destination written down in Chinese.
We went to kayaking and rowing yesterday. Security is really tight at the venues. We always get patted down, run over with a metal detector and have our bags searched. The last time they went through my purse, the security guy pulled out my “Charmin to Go” (tiny portable roll of toilet paper) and asked me what it was. It flashed through my mind that since I don’t speak Chinese, it might come down to being branded a terrorist or, somehow, miming the function of toilet paper. Fortunately, he became distracted by my lipstick and forgot about it.
Next on our list of things to see is a hutong tour by rickshaw. Hutongs are very small houses in long rows, many of which were demolished to make way for the Olympics and new hotels. They are doing tours because hutongs may soon be part of China’s past. Then we’re off to a street famous for it’s night life.
August 13, This week our other daughter, Valerie, and her husband, Bentley, joined us in Beijing. We toured the Forbidden City, Tienanmen Square, Temple of Heaven and the Summer Palace. Wednesday and Thursday we’ll be attending Olympic events. We’ve seen women’s softball, men’s beach volleyball and, tomorrow, will see rowing and kayak/slalom.
We are staying in an apartment we are renting from a Mr. Gong. It was his apartment when he was part of a “work unit” of people employed by the People’s Daily Newspaper. We’re in one of many 15- or 20-story apartment buildings around the newspaper office. We are clearly the first non-Chinese people ever to set foot in the place. We stop traffic when we walk around. We’re greeted by everything from mild curiosity to slack-jawed amazement. People stop me at tourist sites to have their picture taken with “the giant blonde woman”! The children are charming, as they are everywhere and run up to us to greet us with “Hello”. It may be the only English word they know and they are very proud to use it with us! We are working on speaking Chinese, but it is hard to remember. It seems that it goes into our brains, finds nothing similar to hang out with and goes right back out.
Andrea has Friday off and we hope to take her to one Olympic event, that day. Then, it’s back to the pool. She begins competing on Monday. More news later–the adventure continues!
August 12, briefly: I think my next email will be about getting around in Beijing. Pedestrians don’t have the right of way. They barely have the right to exist! More later!
August 9 We made it to Beijing by way of Shanghai, a Yangtze River cuise and then the Terra Cotta Warriors. The trip has been great and we have been healthy the whole time. We have learned so much about China and its people. Attending the opening ceremonies last night was a once in a lifetime experience. We missed some of the detail by not seeing it on TV, but the spectacle and size of everything was something you have to be there to believe. It was over 100 degrees and very humid in the Bird’s Nest. The people running sideways around the globe and the moving type boxes full of people were incredible. They must have been practicing for years. We were in our hard plastic seats for seven hours, after which I have a permanent crease in my backside from clothing seams. It will be until the next Olympics before that corrects itself! I’ll see if we can send pictures after Andrea swims during the second week. Hope things are going well at Harker!
Senior class president and graduating senior Senan Ebrahim was named as one of two California Presidential Scholars , joining the ranks of other scholars – one man and one woman from each state, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, along with at-large, out-of-the-country and Arts scholars- selected for the honor. Ebrahim earned a perfect SAT score, was Bausch & Lomb Top Science Scholar, a semifinalist in the Intel and Siemens competitions, and won top marks on nine AP exams. His interests range from swimming and cross-country to theater, speech and debate, and he serves as a tutor, camp counselor, hospital volunteer and disaster relief fundraiser. All Presidential Scholars are invited to attend a ceremony in their honor in Washington, D.C., in June. Ebrahim chose his Harker history teacher, Ramsay Westgate to accompany him as his most inspiring and challenging teacher.
The Harker art department hosted its inaugural Juried Art Exhibition in the Shah Hall Gallery on Apr. 30. Over 100 student artists featured 244 original creations in six competitive categories: drawing; painting; sculpture; ceramics; digital photography and graphic design; and printmaking, collage and mixed media.
“We had double the amount of classes this year,” said teacher Pilar Agüera-Esparza, who reflected on the expansion of the Study of Visual Art class to freshmen and sophomores this year. The growth, she added, resulted in “more variety in the types of projects created.”
When asked about the benefits such an event brings to Harker, Agüera-Esparza quoted Stanford professor and artist Elliot Eisner: “Not everything has a practical utility, but maybe it’s experientially valuable. Learning through the arts promotes the idea that there is more than one solution to a problem, or more than one answer to a question.”
Harker students and faculty experienced the exhibits while munching pizza and cake and enjoying a performance by the US Jazz Band, with vocalist Frankie Nagle, Gr. 9, and conducted by Chris Florio. Artist, educator and retired member of the Harker faculty, Don Maxwell, served as judge. Best of Show award went to freshman Susan Tu and sophomores Jeanette Chin and Jackie Ho for their mixed media creation “Plank Mask.” Ho, who displayed nine works, also won the award for Most Exhibited Artist. Categorical awards included:
Drawing – First Place: “Light Study: Chairs and Stools,” charcoal and pastel by Jackie Ho, Gr. 10. Drawing – Honorable Mention: “Paper Light Study,” charcoal by Winny Huang, Gr. 11.
Painting – First Place: “Commotion,” acrylic on canvas by Eugenia Sorotokin, Gr. 12. Painting – Honorable Mention: “Grass,” oil on canvas by Heidi Wang, Gr. 12.
Sculpture – First Place: “Untitled,” alabaster stone by Jami Woolsey, Gr. 12. Sculpture – Honorable Mention: “Untitled,” alabaster stone by Kyle Drummer, Gr. 10.
Photo/Digital – First place: “Cliffs,” digital illustration by Melissa Chen, Gr. 12. Photo/Digital – Honorable Mention: “Self-Portrait,” digital illustration by Katrina Kao, Gr. 10.
Ceramics – First Place: “Yellow/Orange Vessel,” ceramics by Julian Stahl, Gr. 11. Ceramics – Honorable Mention: “Ochre & White Vessel,” ceramics by Lauren Moser, Gr. 11.
Printmaking/Collage/Mixed Media – First Place: “I love love,” collage by Tiffany Lai, Gr. 12. Printmaking/Collage/Mixed Media – Honorable Mention: “Inspired by Social Realism,” by Niti Shahi, Gr. 10.
The second event in the Harker Speaker Series took place May 16 attended by parents, students and faculty, who came to hear Dahr Jamail recount his experiences as one of only a very few unembedded journalists in war-torn Iraq.
Jamail, whose work now regularly appears in leading newspapers and magazines mostly in Europe and Asia, described how his outrage with the mainstream media led him to leave a comfortable life in Alaska to travel to Baghdad in the early months of the war in 2003. Equipped with only an inexpensive laptop computer, a small digital camera, meager savings and the e-mail addresses of 130 friends and acquaintances back in Alaska, Jamail described how a fortuitous combination of Internet research and an early string of opportune encounters not only got him into Baghdad safely, but also helped him secure his first driver and interpreter. Once in Iraq, Jamail was able to talk directly to the people most affected by the conflict, both citizens and soldiers. Jamail explained how this immediacy, along with his ability to bypass military censorship, enabled him to report on events that went either unseen or were falsely reported by mainstream observers offering, for example, a firsthand account of the actual events inside Fallujah following the now-famous siege.
Jamail noted afterward his presentation that it was the response of the students, in particular, that gave him the most hope, saying that the intelligent comments and questions made his work that much more worthwhile. Jamail’s upcoming work focuses on a quiet resistance movement that has been gradually spreading amongst deployed soldiers, and its impact on the war.
Harker’s varsity girls volleyball team is the 2007 Nor Cal Division IV champ!
The team took the title in four games in Sacramento Tuesday evening against Christian Brothers High School. Harker won the first pair 25-13, 25-18, lost the third game 19-25 and slammed back to cap the match 25-19. Harker math teacher Stephanie Woolsey attended the game – along with close to 300 other loyal faculty, staff, students and parents who made the trek – and called in to report: “We were hot, they were not! We had a great crowd here, incredible, with two bus loads of students and many who drove up on their own. It was crazy!”
Since the inception of Harker’s Upper School – launched in 1998 – this is the first Harker team in its history to be named NorCal champions.
Next stop is San Jose State University for the State Championship against the Division IV SoCal champs, Santa Fe Christian, this Saturday, Dec 1. Game time should be around noon. Check back for more details, but plan to come out and cheer the team on to the championship
A team of eight Harker students was selected to represent the United States at the 2007 Junior 8 (J8) Summit in Wismar, Germany, a parallel youth event to the G8 Summit. “If these are tomorrow’s leaders, the future looks good indeed,” said Caryl Stern, acting-president of the U.S. Fund for UNICEF, sponsors (along with Morgan Stanley) of the J8 program.
On June 6 a delegation of J8 students from different countries, including a Harker representative, were taken by helicopter to the Summit meeting site to present the J8 communiqué to world leaders. Harker’s representative was seated next to President Bush and interviewed by the BBC.