This year, The Harker School has two students accepted into the junior high All-State Band: Cynthia Hao and Kristen Park, both grade 8. David Hart, instrumental music teacher for grades 6-8, said “Hao made it into the Concert Band while Park made the highest group, the Symphonic Band.” Having two students accepted to the All-State Band is a Harker first, as is having a student in the Symphonic Band. “It is very exciting,” Hart said.
For the last 52 years, the California Band Directors Association (CBDA) has hosted the California All-State Honor Bands. Once each year, the CBDA conducts auditions, which are held all across the state of California, and the highest caliber students from both junior high and high school are chosen to make up the All-State Honor Bands.
January 15, 2012:
Several news outlets have published or broacast stories on the 29 Bay Area Intel Science Talent Search semi-finalists:
The UC Santa Cruz Astronomy and Astrophysics web page has a story noting four semi-finalists, including three Harker students worked on their projects while part of the UC Santa Cruz Science Internship Program.
January 11, 2012:
For the second year in a row, Harker broke the record for Intel Science Talent Search semifinalists in California, when 11 students, all of them in grade 12, were named at a morning assembly on Jan. 11. Prag Batra, Lucy Cheng, Nicole Dalal, Govinda Dasu, Michelle Deng, Vishesh Gupta, Revanth Kosaraju, Ramya Rangan, Pavitra Rengarajan, Kathryn Siegel and Albert Wu all received a $1,000 prize for the projects they submitted to the contest. This year’s competition had 1,839 entrants from nearly 500 high schools in 44 states, the District of Columbia and overseas. Of those, 300 students were selected as semifinalists. Only one school had more semifinalists than Harker in the entire country.
Last year, Harker broke the record for California with seven semifinalists, two of whom, Nikhil Parthasarathy ’11 and Rohan Mahajan ’11, were named finalists, making Harker the only school in the nation to produce two Intel finalists.
On Jan. 25, 40 finalists will be chosen to go to Washington, D.C. in March to compete for more than $1.25 million in awards from the Intel Foundation.
The students’ projects are as follows:
“Donor and Epitope Specific Variations in Immune Gene Expression in CMV Dextramer Positive CD8 T Cells,” by Nicole Dalal
“De Novo Splice From Discovery from RNA-Seq Data,” by Ramya Rangan
“Detailed Chemical Abundance Patterns of Andromeda Dwarf Satellites from Cadded Spectra,” by Lucy Cheng
“An Ontological Bayesian Framework for Context-Specific Navigation and Discovery of Biomedical Knowledge,” by Michelle Deng
“Determining the Genetic Target of Drugs Using a Synthetic Lethality Map,” by Kathryn Siegel
“Neuroanatomical and Cell Population Abnormalities Found in Mouse Model for Human Chromosome,” by Pavitra Rengaragan
“Role of Epidermal Hif-1 ALPHA in the Inflammatory and Angiogenic Response to Ischemia in Diabetic Wound Healing,” by Revanth Kosaraju
“Storage of Active Biological Compounds in Silk Films,” by Prag Batra
“Discovery of 16 Nearby Brown Dwarf Candidates in WISE Preliminary Release Data,” by Govinda Dasu
“Multi-net Bayesian Networks for Integrative Genomic Discovery: Application to the Epistatic Interactions for HIV,” by Albert Wu
“Use of Discretization Approach in Autonomous Control of an Active Extrados/Intrados Camber Morphing Wing,” by Vishesh Gupta
Saratoga News – Nov. 15, 2011: In a story on Siemens contest finalists, students Lucy Cheng, grade 12, and Paulomi Bhattacharya, grade 11, receive mention for being named regional finalists in October.
San Jose Mercury News – Nov. 11, 2011: Student Sahil Kapur, grade 6, is featured in a story about the unique date of the year, referred to as “11/11/11.” Amazingly, the date was Kapur’s 11th birthday, which he celebrated by playing 11 holes of golf, inviting 11 friends to his birthday party and cutting the birthday cake at 11:11 p.m.
San Jose Mercury News – Nov. 1, 2011: The Harker School is recognized for earning second place in the 2011 Fall Startup Event math contest, in which Patrick Yang, grade 12, placed first in the grade 12 division.
Silicon Valley Community Newspapers – Oct. 28, 2011: Alex Najibi, grade 12, is profiled in a story about a website he created, www.goOutAndHelp.org, that assists students in finding places where they can perform community service.
San Jose Mercury News – Sept. 14, 2011: Receiver Daanish Jamal, grade 12, is mentioned in Varsity Extra’s “Highlight Reel” for his three-touchdown performance against Emery. Colby Rapson ’10 is also commended in “Movin’ On Up” for role in helping the U.C. Berkeley men’s rowing team, for which she is coxswain, complete an undefeated season.
Update: After trailing most of the first round game of the Santa Clara Valley Athletic League Championship tournament Tuesday night against Fremont, our girls water polo team came on strong in the fourth quarter to secure a 13-10 victory. Anna Levine, grade 10, scored five goals and Keri Clifford, grade 11, three. The girls now face No. 1 seed Santa Clara in the semifinals Thurs., Nov. 3, 7:30 at our own Singh Aquatic Center. Come cheer on our Eagles!
Nov. 1, 2011
The Harker School’s girls water polo team hosts the Santa Clara Valley Athletic League Championships for the first time next week, with high hopes of a win themselves.
In mid-October, they won three of their five games at the prestigious Western States Varsity Girls Water Polo Tournament in Modesto, defeating Beyer, Ukiah and Newman. Following that, they suffered a loss at Lynbrook, but came back at Cupertino High with a 15-4 victory, followed by a tough 8-5 loss to Saratoga High.
So though the pendulum has swung this season, the girls have the strength and potential to pull off some tough wins in the championships. The girls are now 13-11 overall, 6-6 in league play and are seeded fourth. They will play the fifth-seeded Fremont at 7:30 on Nov. 1, so come out and cheer them on! Games are from 4:30-8 p.m. at the upper school’s Singh Aquatic Center on Nov. 1, 3 and 4. Ticket prices are $6 for adults and non-ASB card holders, and $3 for children 6-12, seniors and students with ASB cards.
“It should be a good tournament,” said coach Allie Lamb. “I think the top six teams are all very close and anyone could win any given day. We have had some ups and downs throughout the season, but I believe we could win the tournament if we are able to pull everything together and apply what we have been working on this throughout this season. It’s going to be a fun week of water polo and I really hope we get a lot of Harker supporters out on the deck to pump up our team!”
Parents were welcomed to the Harker campuses in September for a series of Back-to-School events. The upper school held its event on Sept. 10, allowing parents to tour the upper school campus, visit classrooms and hear upper school teachers talk about their classes and teaching methods. Student club representatives also set up tables in Nichols Hall to give parents a look at the different clubs their students can join.
The lower school held two Back-to-School Nights, one for grades 4-5 on Sept. 12, and another for grades 1-3 on Sept. 13. Both had parents touring the Bucknall gym, where teachers had tables and displays set up containing information about their classes. They also toured the campus and attended demonstrations by Harker teachers in their classrooms.
Finally, the middle school Back-to-School Night on Sept. 15 also took parents to presentations in classrooms, and science teacher Daniel Sommer even got the parents involved in a basic science project. Middle school art teacher Elizabeth Saltos entertained her audience with some very creative hat designs.
This article was originally published in the Fall 2011 Harker Quarterly.
Students are not the only ambitious Harker people who search out internships and learning opportunities over the summer. Our faculty kept busy with a variety of summer projects.
Science Teacher Studies Nanotechnology at Stanford
Raji Swaminathan, grade 7 science teacher, spent time at Stanford learning about nanotechnology at their Summer Institute for Middle School Teachers (SIMST). Nanoscience is the study of incredibly small things to the order of a billionth of a meter. Swaminathan was particularly interested in how the immunology field is using nanotech to help combat diseases. She also learned about the workings of STMs and ATMs, Scanning Tunneling Microscopes and Atomic Force Microscopes, which help scientists understand the atoms of different materials. Her students can plan on some excellent new activities when they study rates of reaction and learn about the workings of atoms.
Teacher Invited to Educational Testing Team
Enni Chen, grade 2 science teacher, worked with the Educational Testing Service (ETS), known best by students and parents for their STAR tests, this summer. Chen was asked to work with the ETS team in Sacramento that administers the STAR test due to her “solid background in teaching and research,” said Mary Arcilla, the associate director of the STAR program. Chen was instrumental in recruiting members to ETS committees to share their insights on special populations in California. Chen also helped organize a field test ETS will be conducting in September, recruiting districts and individual schools to participate. Chen was recognized for her initiative and outside-of- the-box thinking, two qualities her students look forward to seeing in her classroom this year.
Music Teacher Completes Doctorate in Music Education
Dave Hart, middle school music teacher, finished his doctorate in music education at the University of Rochester’s Eastman School of Music. Hart’s focus was both in music education and performance in jazz trumpet. Hart was brought to Harker after finishing his three years of course work, which included performing, lecturing on the effects of improvisation and musical education, and teaching at undergraduate and after-school programs. The research component of his dissertation focused on the positive impact of improvisation on students’ abilities to understand and learn music. Hart currently leads the middle school orchestra and jazz band in improvisational practices, something that is often overlooked in musical education programs. Be sure to request a spontaneous number or two at the next jazz concert or a duet featuring Hart and his wife, Leslie, a French horn player who also earned her doctorate at Eastman.
English Teacher’s Poetry Introduces Art Display in N.Y.
Alexandra Mattraw Rosenboom, an award-winning poetess and Harker English teacher, had a Harker-inspired poem included in “Black and White,” the summer 2011 exhibition of New York’s Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition. The show, which ran July 16-Aug. 21, was in a huge Civil War-era coffee warehouse, and Rosenboom’s poem, “Inside the Construction: The Brain,” was mounted and displayed at the entrance. “The poem was inspired by notes I took during our February faculty retreat,” said Rosenboom. The guest speaker at the retreat was a neuroscientist who discussed the way we develop thoughts. “Because my poem explores how humans think in black and white before our brain processes things in color, it worked quite well with the show’s theme,” she said. In addition, Rosenboom has two poems in the latest American Letters & Commentary, issue 22.
Wajahat Ali ’94, an attorney, essayist and playwright, was featured on National Public Radio (NPR) in September to talk about the Muslim-American experience in a post-9/11 world. Mina Kim interviewed Ali, asking him about his personal experience on 9/11, his thoughts and feelings on the decade following and how he wrote his play, “The Domestic Crusaders,” which is about a Muslim family’s post-9/11 experience. Ali recently helped write a report on Islamophobia in America (a topic he focuses on at Center for American Progress), and was also interviewed on NPR in May 2011 following the death of Osama Bin Laden.
Alexander Wang ’02, now a major fashion designer, was featured in In Style magazine in mid-September. His interview talks about his inspiration, his fashion tips, and his popular T-shirt line. He was also featured on In Style’s website with designers Sophie Theallet and Billy Reid for the T-shirts the trio designed for Starbucks, which celebrates its 40th anniversary this year. The T-shirts were inspired by the brand, and one shirt in particular appears to have coffee spilled down the front of it — the one thing “everyone tries to avoid,” the magazine quotes Wang as saying.
In late August and early September, lower school families gathered at the Bucknall campus for a pair of special Welcome Back barbecues. Families enjoyed hamburgers, hot dogs, snacks, soda and other treats in a fun, picnic-like atmosphere. Parents had the opportunity to meet and chat with faculty and staff while their children made use of the campus’ excellent playground areas.
The Harker School’s girls varsity tennis team went to Monterey in mid-September to compete with 15 other teams in the Santa Catalina Invitational, and for the first time in Harker history, brought home a first place victory. Senior Aranshi Kumar won first place at number four singles. At number one singles, co-captain Jenny Chen, grade 11, reached the semifinals, co-captain Tanya Piskun, grade 12, as well as Katia Mironova, grade 10, placed second in number one doubles along with number three singles player Daria Karakoulka, grade 11, and the number 3 doubles team of Ariana Shulman, grade 10, and Indica Sur, grade 11. Sahithya Prakash, grade 10, along with the doubles team of Sylvie Dobrota, grade 11, and Arden Hu, grade 9, reached the quarterfinals of number two singles and doubles, respectively.
Volleyball:
Harker girls volleyball defeated Saratoga High, King’s Academy and Fremont at freshmen, JV and varsity levels to sweep the entire week. Varsity is on a five-game win streak with a 5-2 overall record.
Water Polo:
Harker girls water polo went 1-3 at the Wilcox Tournament over the weekend, playing well against strong competition and defeating Lincoln 10-5 in the process. Keri Clifford, grade 11, had 13 goals in the tournament. Others chipping in were: Simy Bhagat, grade 12, Anna Levine, grade 10, Sonia Sidhu, grade 11, Delaney Martin, grade 9, Anushka Das, grade 9, Rachel Yanovsky, grade 11 and Daphne Millard, grade 11.
Harker’s varsity football team lost to Capuchino in mid-September, with a final score of 35-14. They dropped to 2-1 on the season.
The Mercury News Highlight Reel noted senior Daanish Jamal for his early-September performance against Emery, which included making three touchdowns and an interception.
Golf:
Girls golf lost by only four strokes to perennial league power Sacred Heart last week. But they bounced back to defeat Mercy the following day with Kristine Lin, grade 10, shooting a 36.
Alumni:
Crew:
Colby Rapson ’10 was in the Sept. 13 section of Movin’ On Up in the Mercury News for her amazing U.C. Berkeley crew accomplishments, which include being the first female coxswain recruited for a men’s team. Rapson had an incredible summer!
Cole Davis ’10 helped the Stanford swim team win the majority of their 11 events against Centenary in Lousiana in early September. Davis was one on a team of four newcomers to win the 200 Neely relay, en route to the fastest times in all 11 events. Davis also won the 50-free race. Stanford noted him as “one of the underclassmen who shined” at the event.