Albert Chu, Gr. 8, was one of eight California winners in the Promising Young Writers Program, which recognizes talent and emphasizes the importance of writing skills. Initially, 12 eighth-grade students submitted a theme piece of writing as well as writing samples. Harker nominated Chu and classmate Anika Ayyar to represent the school in the competition. Chu’s work was judged on content, purpose, audience, tone, word choice, organization, development and style. He earned a Certificate of Recognition for Superior Performance in Writing, and Ayyar received a Certificate of Participation.
Reprinted from the Harker Quarterly March 2010 issue
On Jan. 14, the tables turned at the upper school campus. The students, typically collecting awards at Intel and Siemens Science competitions and presenting their own research at the annual and upcoming Harker Research Symposium (see December Harker Quarterly), became the subjects for a cutting-edge research study conducted by Stanford University.
The collaboration began in the fall of 2008, when biologist and principal researcher Dr. Marcel Salathé contacted Katherine Schafer, biology and research teacher at Harker. After meeting with Schafer, Salathé knew that Harker would be a great place to run the study and that Schafer would be a great partner in the project.
“It’s … very important that everyone is excited about the research and the project,” Salathé said, “and after talking to a few teachers and students it became clear that Harker would be a very good place to do this.”
“There is no data of such detail about human contact networks at this scale, especially at schools,” Salathé said, “so the data will be the first of its kind, which is always a very exciting prospect in science.”
The data will be used to create a detailed contact network and Salathé and his team will run epidemic simulations on this established network to help advance understanding of how diseases spread through human interactions and, potentially, use the conclusions to improve epidemic control within schools.
Setting up the research took a year’s worth of preparation and two trial runs to work out kinks, but the experiment will offer new insight into the spread of viruses. For a day, students, faculty and staff wore wireless devices, called motes, around their necks, and stationary motes were mounted on the walls of most classrooms. These low-powered sensory devices logged interactions with each other through weak radio signal detection
To properly set up the research, Harker forwarded a letter from the researchers to parents explaining the project. Then, Salathé and colleagues Philip Levis, assistant professor of computer science, and James Holland Jones, assistant professor of anthropology, provided details at a schoolwide assembly the day before the data collection to stress the importance of student involvement in the research.
The study is a marriage between Stanford’s biology, anthropology and computer science departments and highlights the interdisciplinary nature of major research to Harker students. Harker is the only school participating in the study and the participation reflects the scientific spirit fostered on campus.
“One of the ideas [for the assembly] was to try and give a little bit of a feel for the different disciplinary perspectives and how it comes together in a single coherent project,” Jones said. Schafer also stressed the importance of reminding students to pursue multiple interests.
“One of the goals of this assembly, in addition to learning about the study, was to get the kids thinking about the fact that having lots of different talents is going to help them a lot down the line,” Schafer said. “Having knowledge of computer science and biology and all of these other things could potentially be a huge benefit for them in their careers and in their lives in general.”
Students were given the opportunity to expand their research interests by providing feedback and working closely with the researchers to determine the best possible way to extract data. Salathé’s team initially thought self-logged data would be sufficient and tested this possibility with Schafer’s research club.
The students in the club were given journals to record their interactions throughout a school day to test the method, but returns were short of the mark. “We then switched to the advanced version of motes, and quite a few students helped us test that idea,” Salathé said.
Andrea Lincoln, Gr. 12, participated in the study and coincidentally did research at Boston University last summer using wireless sensor networks (WSN) similar to the motes used in Stanford’s study. Lincoln thought the experiment served as a worthy introduction to the vast world of research.
“Given the huge percentage of Harker students who are considering research as a possible career, I believe it is valuable for us to have an introduction,” Lincoln said. “Perhaps seeing the WSN research will convince some students to look into research internships.”
Almost 800 motes were distributed across campus and roughly 6.5 million pieces of raw data were collected. Both Schafer and Salathé said the day went incredibly smoothly.
“This is in large part because we were so well prepared,” Salathé said.
The entire process was also Schafer’s chance to get involved in research again. After studying the population ecology of stomatopod crustaceans and pygmy octopuses on coral reefs in Belize for her doctoral dissertation, Schafer said the Stanford research project contrasted significantly from the type of research she did as a field biologist.
Salathé is pleased with the whole data gathering process and results should be available in April. “I think we would do it pretty much exactly the same way if we were to do it again,” he noted, giving full credit for the successful effort to Schafer.
“She was excited from the beginning and is the main reason why this Harker-Stanford collaboration has worked out so well,” he said. “It couldn’t have been done without her.”
Harker debaters made the final round of the National Debate Coaches Association Championships the weekend of April 17-18 in Washington, D.C. Justine Liu, Gr. 11 and Akshay Jagadeesh, Gr. 10, lost in the final round in Public Forum Debate in a 2-1 decision. Ziad Jawadi, Gr. 11 and Aakash Jagadeesh, Gr. 10, were semifinalists.
The prior weekend, Harker debaters flew to New York to compete in the Westchester Classic tournament, where freshmen Anuj Sharma and Aneesh Chona won the final round of Varsity Public Forum Debate to earn the tournament title. Senior Kelsey Hilbrich and sophomore Frederic Enea lost in the quarterfinal round, and Hilbrich was named top speaker of the tournament.
The National Merit Scholarship Corporation (NMSC), a nonprofit organization that honors the scholastic achievements of high school students, has begun to announce the winners in the 55th annual National Merit Scholarship Program. Congratulations to Sarah Teplitsky, Gr. 12, who was awarded a scholarship by Lockheed Martin.
In September, Harker News Online posted the names of the 50 Harker students who were semifinalists in this competition, based on the scores they earned on their 2008 PSATs. Corporate-sponsored scholarship winners are the first group to be selected from the nation’s semifinalists who have advanced to the finals. National Merit-sponsored and college-sponsored scholarships will be announced in May and July.
Approximately 1,000 high school seniors have won corporate-sponsored National Merit scholarships financed by about 200 companies, foundations and other business organizations, according to the NMSC website.
Students from Gr. 3, 4 and 5 had impressive results in this year’s math competitions. All Gr. 3 students recently completed participation in the Continental Mathematics League (CML) contest, where the high team score earned Harker a regional award. The six problems for each meet require logical thinking and reasoning, and schools compete internationally. Earning a perfect score of 18 over the three meets this year was Brandon Ma, who earned a medal for his achievement.
Although the top-scoring student always wins a medal, this is only the third time since Stephanie Woolsey, Gr. 3 math teacher and contest advisor, began administering the contest approximately six years ago that a perfect score has been earned. Ma earned an additional medal for being a national student winner for his perfect score.
Previous scores of 18 were earned by Grace Guan in 2007 and Rishabh Gargeya in 2008. Scoring a total of 16 points and earning certificates of recognition were Lilia Gonzales, Jerry Peng and Tiffany Wong.
Two students, Sahana Narayen and Nishant Ravi, both earned scores of five on each meet, for a total score of 15. The meets occur once a month in January, February and March during regular math classes. Scores are reported as both team and individual scores, with the highest possible team score being 36 for each meet. The highest six scores for the grade are reported as the team scores each month.
This year, students earning a score of six for at least one meet, in addition to the winners listed above, included Priya Bhanot, Bobby Bloomquist, Tim Chang, Brian Faun, Jacob Kim and Gene Wang. “These questions are challenging, and require students to think creatively and work carefully,” said Woolsey. She added, “It’s a great way for students to demonstrate their problem-solving abilities outside of the normal course material.”
The cumulative Harker team score was 101, which tied with the Mirman School for the Gifted in Los Angeles and earned a regional award. This team score is in the top five percent of the 462 schools that participated this year.
Gr. 4 ranked in the top five percent of all 271 schools, earning 168 points out of a possible 180 points. Rajiv Movva, scoring 26 out of 30, was the fourth grade leader. The following students scored a perfect score of six on one or more contests: Movva, Michael Kwan, Shaya Zarkesh, Adrian Chu, Amy Dunphy, Edgar Lin, Griffin Ellis, Justin Su, Sahana Srinivasan, Neeraj Aggarwal and Rose Guan, who competed as a Gr. 3 cross-grader.
The Gr. 5 competitors were regional winners and ranked in the top two percent of all 287 schools, earning 172 out of a possible 180 points. Two students, David Zhu and Aneesh Samineni, earned regional individual awards and both had a cumulative score of 29 out of 30. The following students scored a perfect score of six on one or more contests: Zhu, Samineni, Peter Wu, Quentin Delepine, Steven Cao, Aditya Dhar, Alexander Lam, Antony Sagayaraj, Eric Pei, Kshithija Mulam and Rishab Gargeya.
Patrick Campbell, Gr. 12, was named the 2010 River of Words Environmental Poetry and Art Contest Bioregion Prize Winner for a poem he wrote about watersheds titled “Old Country.” River of Words is a California-based, nonprofit organization that seeks to encourage connections between creative young people and their natural environment.
According to their website, award-winning artwork and poetry “is exhibited around the globe and is seen by millions of people each year, both in person, and reprinted in magazines, books, annual reports and other media.” Campbell wrote his poem while a student in Jennifer Siraganian’s Creative Writing class last fall. Campbell accepted his award at a ceremony on April 17 at the San Francisco Public Library.
“The award ceremony was lovely,” reported Siraganian, who added that Pamela Michael, River of Words executive director and co-founder, described Campbell’s poem as the strongest from the thousands of entries received from Bay Area students. In addition to enjoying publication in the River of Words annual anthology, Campbell has been invited to the national awards ceremony at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., in June.
The 28th annual Spanish Declamation Contest “Gustavo A. Bécquer” took place at Harker March 24 at the Nichols Hall auditorium. Spanish students in levels I-V as well as native speakers from 14 public and private middle and high schools were in attendance. The students needed to memorize and recite a poem by a well-known Spanish-speaking author. Contestants were judged on their poise, memorization, delivery, pronunciation and diction by current and retired Spanish teachers from other schools, in addition to guest judge Rosario Vital, the editor of the Spanish language newspaper “El Observador.” Vital was also covering the contest for the newspaper.
Harker Spanish students won as the top school overall. In Spanish I, freshmen Rahul Nalamasu and Rohan Chandra respectively took first and second. Cole Manaster, Gr. 10, took first place in Spanish II, while Roshan Daran, Gr. 9, earned third place. Sumit Minocha, Gr. 9, took second place in the Spanish III category. Sophomores Kristen Herr and Priyanka Mody won first and second place, respectively, in Spanish 4, while senior Rashmi Sharma tied for first place in Spanish V.
Of particular note, native speaker Karan Das-Grande, Gr. 9, presented a poem titled “En mis sueños,” that he wrote himself. The students were coached by Spanish teachers Isabel García, Diana Moss, Abel Olivas and Daniela Rozanes.
Masters of ceremony were Olivia Zhu, Gr. 11 and Nathaniel Edwards, Gr. 12. Entertainment at the event was provided by junior Nikhil Parthasarathy, who played flamenco guitar at the beginning of the program, and a Ballet Folklórico group from Prospect High School, who danced prior to the event on the Nichols Hall patio. While students presented their poems, a PowerPoint presentation with imagery and lines in English from each poem was displayed to help non-Spanish-speaking students understand what was being said. After the contest, Constance Richardson, foreign language department chair at the Castilleja School, wrote to say, “The organization was seamless, the atmosphere was so welcoming and the efficiency was impressive. Kudos to you!”
The Winged Post and the online Web site, talonwp.com, have won a Crown Award from the Columbia Scholastic Press Association (CSPA) for its excellence in writing, coverage and content. The Crown Award, the highest recognition given annually by the CSPA, recognizes student print or online media for overall excellence and only 11 schools nationwide received Gold Crown awards for their Web sites. In addition, the Winged Post student newspaper received a Silver Crown for its efforts. Journalism teacher and advisor to the two publications, Chris Daren, traveled to New York with a group of students from the publication staffs to receive the awards at Columbia University.
With guidance and support from Daren, journalism students in both yearbook and newspaper have had opportunities to cover not only schoolwide events, but also interview celebrities and attend performance premieres. In early January, reporters talked to actor Harrison Ford, Senator Diane Feinstein, Mayor Gavin Newsom and figure skater Kristi Yamaguchi at the San Francisco premiere of “Extraordinary Measures,” and Channing Tatum and Amanda Seyfried as they promoted their new movie, “Dear John.” In February, the Winged Post spent an afternoon with the cast of “Ovo,” the new Cirque de Soleil touring show, and reviewed the group’s San Jose premiere the following day.
Both Talon and the Winged Post have received a number of silver and gold medal awards from CSPA’s annual critique. Additionally, the Winged Post received the National Scholastic Press Associations Pacemaker award for excellence in 2008.
Monisha Dilip, Gr. 12, received the 2009 National Young Women of Distinction Award in late February, given every year to the top ten Girl Scouts in the country. A Gold Award Girl Scout, Dilip received the high honor for her extraordinary leadership and commitment to service. For her community action project, she established a free learning center for the visually impaired in Chennai, India.
The center is the first of its kind in India. Dilip discovered that less than five percent of reading materials are in an accessible format and that visually impaired people are the most persecuted in poor countries. At the learning center, visually impaired people can use assistive technologies to browse the Internet, access educational and informational materials and keep in touch with friends and family. Girl Scouts of the USA said that Dilip’s “compassion for children with disabilities was the motivation for the Indian Disability Center.”
For the first time in tournament history, a middle school team won the Novice High School Division at the Santa Clara University Invitational, a high school debate tournament held in mid-December. The winning Harker team consisted of eighth graders Rohith Bhethanabotla and Travis Chen. Because Harker is one of few middle schools with a debate team it is often difficult to find venues for competition. However, a small number of high school debate tournaments allow middle school teams to compete. Harker, the only middle school team in the tournament, sent 21 debaters and many of them came away with impressive achievements.
Other students who did especially well include Vikram Sundar, Kevin Duraiswamy and Jithin Vellian, all Gr. 8. Overall the team consists of primarily eighth graders but also includes some seventh and sixth graders. Their achievements are especially impressive because this tournament is attended by some of the best high school teams in the area.