The California Mathcounts team, including Harker’s Rajiv Movva, grade 8, won the championship at the Mathcounts National Competition held in Orlando, Fla., in early May. The team of four took the title over 55 other teams representing all states, Washington, D.C., Guam, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. State Department. Maryland and Virginia took second and third place, respectively. California team member Swapnil Garg of Cupertino Middle School was the individual Mathcounts champion. He will receive a $20,000 college scholarship.
Each student on the California team will receive a $2,000 college scholarship and a beautiful trophy. The team members also got a VIP tour of the Magic Kingdom and were grand marshals at the 3 p.m. parade on Saturday, May 10.
“Rajiv has been a terrific mathlete and deserves all the accolades,” said Vandana Kadam, middle school mathematics department chair, who accompanied the team as assistant coach and did much of the heavy lifting preparing the team. The official coach was based in Southern California, while all four team members were in Northern California. “Working with four students from four different schools was a challenge, but their weekly practices at Harker helped with the bonding,” noted Kadam, who has been official coach of past California Mathcounts teams. She coached the California team that won the national Mathcounts championship in 2011.
This report provided by Jenny Heidt The Harker Forensics team had a record-setting weekend at the National Debate Coaches Association Championship at Weber State University April 11-14. The speech and debate team won national championships in three out of the four events at the tournament! Eight students went home with titles in three categories: Lincoln-Douglas, Public Forum and Congress. Pranav Reddy, grade 11, won first place in Lincoln-Douglas debate; Misha Tseitlin, grade 9, placed first in Congressional debate; and Jasmine Liu, grade 10, and Kevin Duraiswamy, Arjun Kumar, Stephanie Lu, Sreyas Misra, and Sebi Nakos, all grade 12, were co-champions in Public Forum debate.
“We’ve had different parts of the program win a title before, but we’ve never had this much overall strength all at once,” said Jenny Heidt, debate coach.
Nakos added, “I don’t think it was as much of an individual effort as much as it was a team effort. As a team everyone put in their part and did their part and everyone put the work they needed to do well as a team.”
More than 300 students from states throughout the nation participated in the tournament. Harker sent 26 upper school students to compete. To qualify for the national tournament, students had to do well at various debate tournaments throughout the invitational season.
Debaters grapple with very complicated issues of public policy and philosophy. The Public Forum and Lincoln-Douglas topics were about potential conflicts between economic development and environmental protection in poorer nations. The Congressional debaters covered a wide range of issues, including assistance to the Ukraine in maintaining its independence from Russia and whether or not various groups or nations ought to be removed from the U.S. State Department list of terrorist organizations. Coach Greg Achten said, “It is not possible to achieve the level of success in an activity as challenging as debate without a tremendous amount of hard work. Succeeding in debate not only requires incredible intellectual acumen, it also requires a very strong work ethic.”
This year’s debate team set a new precedent for the future success of the school’s speech and debate program. “It’s not an exaggeration to say that it’s the single most successful weekend in the history of Harker speech and debate,” Heidt said. Coach Carol Green summed it up nicely by saying, “We are really proud of all of the students and the work they have done in addition to the successes they achieved.”
The team has several more important tournaments coming up at the end of the 2013-2014 season, including travel to Kentucky, Illinois, Kansas and Texas.
This report submitted by Vandana Kadam, Harker math teacher. Kadam coached the state championship team and will coach them for the national competition. This is her fourth competition; in 2011, she led the California team to the national championship.
Harker’s team is the 2014 state MathCounts champion, a repeat of 2008 and 2011 victories for Harker.
Last Saturday, Harker’s MathCounts team was represented at the state MathCounts competition by Jimmy Lin, Rajiv Movva, Shaya Zarkesh, all grade 8, and Katherine Tian, grade 7. In addition to the Harker team members, Jerry Chen, grade 8, went in as an independent competitor. Everyone performed exceptionally well.
Movva placed second among the top 10 individuals and will represent California in the national competition to be held May 8-10 in Orlando, Fla. Zarkesh placed 14th and Lin was ranked 23rd (just two points behind Zarkesh).
It was a tough competition, with Cupertino, Redwood and Miller schools also fielding extremely strong teams. Harker beat defending state champion William Hopkins School from Fremont, and also passed champions Miller and Redwood to clinch the No. 1 spot. The point separation between the top four teams was small so it was a nail-biting finish for Harker, giving it the flavor of March Madness! Harker had the best performance of all the teams in the entire state.
The top four teams were all from the Santa Clara chapter, with three more teams from this chapter among the top 10 teams in the Northern California competition.
The top 175 students (34 teams, including all chapter champions, and 39 top independents) from 14 different chapters from Northern California participated in the competition at Stanford.
A similar number of students from 12 different chapters from Southern California participated in the same contest held on March 15 at University of California, Irvine. The top 10 students were recognized at each of these venues. Four top students from these 300-plus students (both venues) were chosen to be part of the California team to go to the national MathCounts competition in Orlando.
All four of these toppers came from Northern California and, as hard as it is to believe, three of these students are from our Santa Clara chapter. There was a tie for first place with four students scoring 43 out of 46 points. (Rankings were then determined based on which problems they had missed, giving more weight to harder problems.) Movva was one of the students who scored 43. Joining Movva in representing California at the national competition will be students from Cupertino Middle School, Raymond J. Fisher Middle School in Los Gatos and Harvest Park Middle School in Pleasanton.
Saturday’s success is highly encouraging. Most of these students have been with the MathCounts program for two years and the title of California state champions is well deserved for each one of them. This is an incredible achievement for the students and for the school.
Please congratulate them on their accomplishment, and thank you all for your support.
A number of Harker students qualified for the National Speech & Debate Tournament at a qualifying event held at Bellarmine College Preparatory this past weekend. The national tournament, sponsored by the National Speech & Debate Association, will take place in Kansas in June.
In Public Forum debate, Jithin Vellian, grade 12, and Nikhil Kishore, grade 11, both qualified. Rohith Kuditipudi and Madhu Nori, both grade 11, qualified in International Extemporaneous Speaking and Original Oratory, respectively. Kenny Zhang, grade 12, automatically qualified for a spot at the national tournament because of a second-place finish at last year’s tournament.
To qualify for the national tournament, most students must place in the top three at a tournament in their district. “The students get one weekend to give their best against some of the toughest opponents in the country, as the California Coast district is one of the top-performing districts in the nation at the national tournament,” said upper school debate teacher Carol Green. According to Green, students who compete every year for a spot at the national tournament number in the tens of thousands.
Each year grade 8 Latin students participate in contests sponsored by Ancient Coins for Education (ACE). Harker students Edgar Lin and Praveen Batra were named school winners in ACE’s recent essay contest.
Batra’s essay on Roman emperor Tiberius went on to win first place in the junior category, according to middle school Latin teacher Lisa Masoni. Both students received ancient Roman coins as prizes.
ACE’s goal is to encourage learning about the classical world through the use of primary sources. This is achieved by providing ancient coins for the students to identify and holding essay contests throughout the year.
Meanwhile, at the upper school, Harker recently received results from the National Classical Etymology Exam, which students in grade 9 and 10 took late last year. Fourteen Harker students participated in exam, sponsored by the National Junior Classical League, reported upper school Latin teacher John Hawley.
“The exam is designed to test a student’s ability to handle both Latin and Greek derivatives and their usage in the English language,” he said.
Of the 14 participants, 13 received either gold or silver medals for their prowess. Advanced level students who earned gold medals are Kevin Duraiswamy and Helena Huang, both grade 12, and Sophia Shatas, grade 11. Silver medals went to Tiffany Chu and Sreyas Misra, both grade 12, and Maya Nandakumar, grade 11.
Intermediate level students who earned gold medals are Rishabh Chandra, Elisabeth Siegel and Allison Wang, all grade 10, and Venkat Sankar and Arjun Subramaniam, grade 9. Silver medals went to grade 9 students Aditya Dhar and Nikhil Manglik.
This report prepared by Gregory Achten, debate coach
The Harker Forensics program has a proud tradition of excellence and competitive success. Over President’s Day weekend, we had some particularly spectacular results that merit special recognition. One hundred twenty-seven Harker upper and middle school students competed in speech and debate events at the California Round Robin and the California Invitational at UC Berkeley. The California Round Robin is an elite tournament where some of the best debaters nationwide compete by invitation only. The California Invitational tournament had 2,064 entries from 197 schools from 26 states and five countries.
Round Robin In Public Forum, seniors Maneesha Panja and Sebi Nakos took first place in their pools while senior Jithin Vellian and junior Nikhil Kishore took second, causing them to meet in the semifinals. Panja and Nakos advanced and were named champions in Public Forum Debate. Nakos also was named third overall speaker in the division. In Lincoln-Douglas Debate, junior Pranav Reddy and senior Srikar Pyda both placed first in their respective pools. Pyda lost in the semifinals, but Reddy was undefeated and named tournament champion.
California Invitational at UC Berkeley The combined success of all members of the team earned Harker first place in debate sweepstakes and third place in the speech and debate combined sweepstakes. This is a huge accomplishment and all of the students played a part in helping Harker achieve this recognition.
In Lincoln-Douglas, Pranav Reddy won 13 consecutive debates at the tournament, beating out 280 competitors from across the country to be named the champion of one of the largest and most prestigious tournaments in the nation. Reddy is the first student in the history of the Harker Forensics program to win this event in Lincoln-Douglas debate. Reddy’s national dominance was further highlighted in early February by his victory at the Golden Desert Invitational at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
In Public Forum, sophomore Eesha Chona and freshman Joyce Huang advanced to finals, losing a close decision to Presentation High School. Chona and Huang beat out a field of 190 teams to reach the finals. In Congressional Debate senior Saachi Jain was also a finalist out of more than 130 competitors.
Congratulations to senior Sreyas Misra, who has been named a finalist in this year’s Intel Science Talent Search, one of eight hailing from the Bay Area. Misra’s project, “Design and Characterization of a Novel Single-headed and Hand-held PET Camera Using 511 keV Photon Collimation via Compton Scatter,” earned him a place among just 40 other students from an original pool of nearly 1,800 entrants. These students will participate in the final stage of the Intel STS in Washington, D.C. from March 6-12, where $630,000 in prizes will be awarded, including the $100,000 grand prize.
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Ten Harker seniors have been named semifinalists in the 2014 Intel Science Talent Search (STS), the second-highest number of semifinalists in the nation and just one short of Harker’s record of 11, set in 2012.
This year’s semifinalists and their projects are: Vikas Bhetanabhotla (“Identification of Satellite Galaxies around Milky Way Galactic Analogs Using Machine Learning Algorithms”), Stephanie Chen (“Globular Clusters as Tracers of Dark Matter in Virgo Cluster Dwarf Elliptical Galaxies”), Christopher Fu (“Molecular Characterization and Rapid Generation of Human Rotavirus VP6-Specific Monoclonal Antibodies”), Anika Gupta (“Novel Drug Delivery Systems Targeting Cancer Stem Cells for Next-Generation Chemotherapy”), Saachi Jain (“MicroRNA-223 Promotes Macrophage Differentiation”), Sreyas Misra (“Design and Characterization of a Novel Single-Headed and Hand-Held PET Camera Using 511 keV Photon Collimation via Compton Scatter”), Preethi Periyakoil (“A Video-Assisted, Time-Lapse Analysis of the Effects of the ELF5 Transcription Factor on the Morphology and Proliferation Kinetics of Breast Cancer Cells”), Rahul Sridhar (“Understanding the Effect of Hinge Mutations on Domain-Swapping in Antiviral Lectin Cyanovirin-N”), Vikram Sundar (“Computational Analysis of Novel Drug Opportunities Using Protein-Protein Docking”) and Albert Zhao (“Oxygen Reduction Activity of Dodecyne-Functionalized AuPd Nanoparticles”).
These 10 students are among 300 nationwide who were selected from nearly 1,800 original entrants from across the country and in overseas schools. Each semifinalist will be awarded $1,000, and in order to bolster education in science, math and engineering, every semifinalist school will receive $1,000 for each student from that school named a semifinalist.
On Jan. 22, 40 of these semifinalists will be chosen to participate in the final stage of the Intel STS in Washington, D.C., where they will share their work with both the public and the scientific community, and compete for a $100,000 grand prize.
Three teams of Harker students — the most of any school — have reached the top 20 in the 2013-14 DECA Stock Market Game.
In the game, students create and manage a virtual investment portfolio. “They started out on Sept. 3 with just $100,000. With diligent and thorough research, attending our Investment Management Seminar Series presentations, and some healthy risk taking, these teams earned over $99,000 put together within three months!” said Juston Glass, director of Harker’s business and entrepreneurship department. “That’s impressive, and yes, they are now taking offers for investment advice.”
The team of Alex Tuharsky, grade 11, Aditya Batra, grade 12, and Pranav Batra, also grade 12, are currently the top team from Harker, boasting returns 29.25 percent above the S&P 500 and ranking fourth in the Western region and 10th internationally. Meanwhile, junior Andrew Zhang is ranked fifth in the region and 16th internationally with a return of 21.92 percent over the S&P 500, and the team of David Lin and Ashwath Thirumalai, both grade 11, are following close behind, showing a 21.74 percent return and ranking sixth in the region and 17th overall.
These stellar rankings qualify the students for the championship round at the DECA International Conference in Atlanta in May, where they will compete with the top 25 teams from each of the four regions. Each team’s portfolios, research methods and investment strategies will be presented and evaluated to see who will be named the DECA Stock Market Game champion.
In late November, Kevin Zhang, grade 11, was notified by ACT Inc. that he had achieved the highest possible composite score of 36 on the ACT college admission and placement exam. According to ACT, this score is reached by less than a tenth of a percent of the students who take the test each year. Of the 1.8 million students who took the test last year, only 1,162 scored 36. Congratulations to Zhang on this accomplishment!
Fall 2013 has been a very successful semester for Harker debaters at both the upper and middle schools, as evidenced by strong performances at the many events students have attended since the start of the school year.
Upper School
Public Forum debate has been a strong event for Harker this fall. At the Grapevine Classic in Texas in mid-September, Vamsi Gadiraju and Nikhil Kishore, both grade 11, reached the Elite 8 after being undefeated in the preliminaries. Kishore finished as the fourth overall speaker. Juniors Andrew Jin and David Lin were undefeated at a National Forensic League tournament at Leland High School on Oct. 19, earning them a spot in the state qualifier. Then Milpitas High School hosted a league tournament Nov. 9-10, in which both Gadiraju and Neil Khemani, grade 12, were undefeated and secured spots in the state qualifier.
Meanwhile, juniors Aadyot Bhatnagar and Avid Wadhwa won the Minneapple Debate Tournament at Apple Valley High School in Minnesota Nov. 1-2, with Jin and Lin reaching the semifinals. Sorjo Banerjee and Mohnish Shah, both grade 10, reached the Elite 8, while Kishore and Gadiraju made it to the top 32. Bhatnagar and Lin were named the third- and fourth-place speakers, respectively.
Harker also had several strong performances in Policy Debate, with juniors Ayush Midha and Arya Kaul reaching the octofinals at a mid-September tournament at Wake Forest University. They were also finalists at the USC Round Robin, winning all 14 possible ballots in the preliminary stage, and Kaul was named the top speaker. Panny Shan, grade 10, and Rahul Shukla, grade 9, were double octofinalists along with the team of Midha and Kaul at the Notre Dame/Harvard Westlake tournament at Notre Dame High School and Harvard-Westlake Upper School in early November. Midha was named the ninth-place speaker.
In Congressional Debate, Alex Lam, grade 9, placed third and was recognized as the top grade 9 student at the Crestian Tradition tournament in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., in early October. Saachi Jain, grade 12, placed fourth, with grade 9 students Aditya Dhar and Misha Tseitlin reaching the finals. At a league tournament at Presentation High School, Tseitlin placed first in his chamber.
Another strong category for Harker was Lincoln-Douglas, in which seniors Srikar Pyda and Pranav Reddy were quarterfinalists at the Greenhill Fall Classic in Texas in late September. Pyda and Reddy were also double octofinalist and semifinalist, respectively, at a mid-October tournament at Presentation High School. At a tournament at St. Mark’s School in Dallas, Reddy was a finalist and also was named the top speaker in a field of 120 debaters. Karen Qi, grade 10, was a double octofinalist at the late-October Meadows Invitational in Las Vegas and an octofinalist at the Harvard-Westlake tournament in early November.
Notable achievements for individual events included junior Rohith Kuditipudi’s fifth-place finish in Extemporaneous Speaking at Crestian (after scoring perfectly in the preliminaries) and Divya Rajasekharan, grade 9, taking fifth in Dramatic Interpretation at tournaments at the University of the Pacific in late October and at Milpitas High School in early November.
Middle School
At a late-September tournament at California State University, Long Beach, seventh grader Nikhil Dharmaraj reached the Open Oratory semifinals.
The following month, middle school debaters participated in the very first tournament held by the Bay Area Middle School Speech & Debate Association on Oct. 5. In Lincoln-Douglas, grade 8 students Sagar Rao and Liza Turchinsky both finished with records of 3-1, while Serena Lu, grade 8, went undefeated. Public Forum saw five teams finish 3-1: Eileen Li and Sejal Krishnan, grade 6; Michael Tang and Kenneth Liou, both grade 6; Naveen Mirapuri and Andrew Cheplyansky, both grade 6; Avi Gulati and Madison Huynh, grade 6; and eighth graders Kevin Xu and Derek Kuo. Tiffany Wong and Anjay Saklecha, both grade 7, placed first and second in Speech, respectively.
Just before Thanksgiving, debaters headed to a tournament at Santa Clara University, where Millie Lin and Aliesa Bahri, both grade 8, reached the elimination rounds in Policy Debate. Gulati placed second in Novice Dramatic Interpretation in his first tournament for this event. Wong placed well in Varsity Humorous Interpretation, coming in at seventh in an event filled with students in grades 11 and 12. Seventh grader Kelly Shen, meanwhile, placed fourth in Novice Humorous Interpretation, and Akshay Ravoor, grade 7 and Saklecha took fifth in Novice Duo Interpretation.
Aside from competition, middle school debate also has been working hard on community efforts. Each month, a busload of middle school forensics students visits the upper school to work with upper school students in preparation for upcoming tournaments. Sessions have included practice debates, case edits and script work, with upper school coaches and students staying late into the afternoon to help the middle school debaters. In addition, upper school students have been going to the middle school campus after school hour to attend speech and debate practices.
In early December, an intramural middle school debate tournament was held in which more than 60 students participated in a total of 37 practice debates and 42 speeches, with more than 40 Harker parents and upper school students volunteering as judges.
Faculty from other departments also have joined the cause, with middle school history teachers Jonathan Brusco, Cyrus Merrill and Andrew Keller giving talks at lunch time on topics such as the National Security Agency and compulsory voting. Middle school librarian Bernie Morrissey also has created research guides for debate topics. English teacher and debate coach Marjorie Hazeltine spends two days a week during lunch and after school working with speech students to prepare for tournaments. Harker parents are also involved, volunteering to help with event logistics, acting as chaperones and participating as judges at many tournaments.