This past April, Harker hosted the first Green Teen Summit, featuring appearances by 350.org founder Bill McKibben and the co-founder of BioTour, Ethan Burke. Harker journalism students put together this video report of the event!
Tags: Featured Story, Green Initiatives, Outreach, topgreenThe Harker School will host the first Green Teen Summit, a student-organized conference for Bay Area high school students interested in environmental activism, on Sat., April 14, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. The half-day conference, held at the upper school campus, will feature inspirational speakers and a wealth of resources to help young people get involved with environmental efforts at school and abroad. Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org, will be one of two keynote speakers at the event. Called “the planet’s best green journalist” by Time magazine and “probably the country’s most important environmentalist” by the Boston Globe, McKibben has authored a dozen books on environmental issues, and started 350.org as a grassroots initiative to end the climate crisis. Since 2009, 350.org has organized 15,000 rallies in 189 countries. The conference’s second keynote speaker, Ethan Burke, is co-founder and director of operations for BioTour, a nonprofit organization that travels across the country via school buses modified to run on vegetable oil and solar energy. BioTour has crisscrossed the nation for two-and-a-half years, giving presentations on the environment at more than 150 universities, high schools and other venues. In addition to the speakers, the Green Teen Summit will offer training and resources provided by the Alliance for Climate Education, which organizes high school assemblies on climate-related issues. Students will also be able to enjoy lunch with green business leaders and attend workshops. The Green Teen Summit was organized by Harker students Daniela Lapidous and Shreya Indukuri, both grade 12, who received a grant in 2009 to improve Harker’s energy efficiency. They used the grant money to place insulating film on upper school classroom windows and start an organic garden. Later, they were instrumental in getting smart meters installed at the lower and upper school campuses to monitor and reduce energy usage. The students have received extensive press coverage for their efforts, and appeared at the Clinton Global Initiative last year as part of a keynote panel. This event is open to all high school students and campus green club advisors. A continental breakfast and vegetarian lunch is included in the ticket price. Tickets are $10 for students and $15 for adults (plus a nominal ticketing fee) and can be purchased at the Green Teen Summit’s Eventbrite page.
Tags: Corporate Home Page, Featured Story, Green Initiatives, topgreenThis story was originally published in the May 2008 issue of Harker News. “Going Green” was the theme of the third annual Harker Research Symposium held in March 2008 on the Saratoga campus. Over 300 attended and 50 students from the middle and upper schools gave presentations. Poster sessions covered diverse topics from new and innovative approaches for generating and saving energy, to reporting on the effects of cell phone conversations on drivers’ reaction times. Paper presentations also covered a wide range of topics including research for new cancer therapies and the effects of farming on river water quality. The sessions featured presentations by our Intel and Siemens semifinalists, the J8 team, three Harker alumni and students from Lynbrook High School in San Jose and Galt High School from Sacramento.” Sponsors were Applied Materials, Google and Hewlett-Packard. Students from San Jose State University demonstrated Phantastic Physics, and Santa Clara University sent their solar decathlon team. Of special interest was a comprehensive exhibit describing the eco-friendly building techniques used in the new science and technology building. Symposium keynote speaker Geoff Green, founder of Students on Ice, a nonprofit organization that takes groups of students from around the world on unique educational trips to the Poles, took the audience on an inspiring and unforgettable voyage to Antarctica and the Arctic, recounting his adventures with orcas and penguins, polar bears and Inuit elders. Anita Chetty, science department chair and event organizer, said the symposium exceeded her wildest hopes. She was thrilled by the sense of energy, excitement and enthusiasm that was palpably present throughout the day. “The kids were so marvelous,” she said. “They came here and do this for the sheer joy of sharing their experiences and learning from each other.”
Tags: Green Initiatives, Harker History, Research Symposium, topgreenThis story was originally published in the May 2008 issue of Harker News. “Going Green” was the theme of the third annual Harker Research Symposium held in March 2008 on the Saratoga campus. Over 300 attended and 50 students from the middle and upper schools gave presentations. Poster sessions covered diverse topics from new and innovative approaches for generating and saving energy, to reporting on the effects of cell phone conversations on drivers’ reaction times. Paper presentations also covered a wide range of topics including research for new cancer therapies and the effects of farming on river water quality. The sessions featured presentations by our Intel and Siemens semifinalists, the J8 team, three Harker alumni and students from Lynbrook High School in San Jose and Galt High School from Sacramento.” Sponsors were Applied Materials, Google and Hewlett-Packard. Students from San Jose State University demonstrated Phantastic Physics, and Santa Clara University sent their solar decathlon team. Of special interest was a comprehensive exhibit describing the eco-friendly building techniques used in the new science and technology building. Symposium keynote speaker Geoff Green, founder of Students on Ice, a nonprofit organization that takes groups of students from around the world on unique educational trips to the Poles, took the audience on an inspiring and unforgettable voyage to Antarctica and the Arctic, recounting his adventures with orcas and penguins, polar bears and Inuit elders. Anita Chetty, science department chair and event organizer, said the symposium exceeded her wildest hopes. She was thrilled by the sense of energy, excitement and enthusiasm that was palpably present throughout the day. “The kids were so marvelous,” she said. “They came here and do this for the sheer joy of sharing their experiences and learning from each other.”
Tags: Green Initiatives, Harker History, Research Symposium, topgreenThis story was originally published in the May 2008 issue of Harker News. “Going Green” was the theme of the third annual Harker Research Symposium held in March 2008 on the Saratoga campus. Over 300 attended and 50 students from the middle and upper schools gave presentations. Poster sessions covered diverse topics from new and innovative approaches for generating and saving energy, to reporting on the effects of cell phone conversations on drivers’ reaction times. Paper presentations also covered a wide range of topics including research for new cancer therapies and the effects of farming on river water quality. The sessions featured presentations by our Intel and Siemens semifinalists, the J8 team, three Harker alumni and students from Lynbrook High School in San Jose and Galt High School from Sacramento.” Sponsors were Applied Materials, Google and Hewlett-Packard. Students from San Jose State University demonstrated Phantastic Physics, and Santa Clara University sent their solar decathlon team. Of special interest was a comprehensive exhibit describing the eco-friendly building techniques used in the new science and technology building. Symposium keynote speaker Geoff Green, founder of Students on Ice, a nonprofit organization that takes groups of students from around the world on unique educational trips to the Poles, took the audience on an inspiring and unforgettable voyage to Antarctica and the Arctic, recounting his adventures with orcas and penguins, polar bears and Inuit elders. Anita Chetty, science department chair and event organizer, said the symposium exceeded her wildest hopes. She was thrilled by the sense of energy, excitement and enthusiasm that was palpably present throughout the day. “The kids were so marvelous,” she said. “They came here and do this for the sheer joy of sharing their experiences and learning from each other.”
Tags: Green Initiatives, Harker History, Research Symposium, topgreenApril 29, 2011 Update: Aneesh Chopra, U.S. chief technology officer, has written an extensive blog about his visit with Daniela Lapidous and Shreya Indukuri, both grade 11. Read the blog here. April 20, 2011 Two Harker students attending Power Shift ’11 in Washington, D.C., earlier this month had the ear of 8,000 attendees, then had a private meeting with Aneesh Chopra, U.S. chief technology officer in the Obama administration. Shreya Indukuri and Daniela Lapidous, both grade 11, addressed the crowd of 8,000-plus at the conference then went on to meet with Chopra for about 30 minutes. The two students have been very active in advocating for reducing energy use through technology and other methods. A list of Harker News Online articles on their activities is at the end of this article. “The meeting [with Chopra] went really well,” said Indukuri. “He was very impressed with the opportunities for energy efficiency in schools and he wants to have Lisa Jackson, administrator of the EPA, and Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education, write a letter to schools to launch a campaign for energy benchmarking. “He loved Harker’s new energy efficiency with the smart energy system and was very supportive of our efforts to take this to other schools; we already helped students implement this project successfully in the Los Gatos – Saratoga High School District,” she added. “We also met with staff members and the director of ARPA-E, (Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy),” added Lapidous. “Their director is Arun Majumdar, and they basically invest in breakthrough clean energy technologies in hopes of finding the next big thing. “We made two presentations,” said Lapidous. “The first was more of an informal conversation while the second was a formal presentation including a segment of the Alliance for Climate Education (ACE) presentation. The audience was a varying number of ARPA-E staff, who are all rather young and very nice.” Following the presentations, “Majumdar came to talk to us personally for about 30 minutes,” said Lapidous. “The post-doctoral fellow who organized the meeting for us, Karma Sawyer, said she couldn’t remember the last time she scheduled a 30-minute meeting for him – usually they are 10 minutes. He lives in the Bay Area when not working in D.C., and he knew exactly where Harker was. “Both he and Mr. Chopra said that this smart energy project was essentially a no-brainer with an obvious positive impact for schools. They both acknowledged the environmental importance but were understandably more interested in the 250 percent ROI our project turned over in about a year,” Lapidous said. “PowerShift, the meeting with Mr. Chopra, and the meeting with Mr. Majumdar were all very exciting and we are extremely inspired to work 10 times harder on SmartPowerEd and expand it to more schools in the Bay Area before the fall comes around,” she finished. http://skylark.harker.org/hno/backups/green-projects-featured-on-49ers-kids-program/ http://skylark.harker.org/hno/backups/energy-dashboard-goes-live/ http://skylark.harker.org/hno/backups/unicef-video-includes-activist-students-in-video/ http://skylark.harker.org/hno/backups/students-filmed-for-video-on-ace-grant-recipients/ http://skylark.harker.org/hno/backups/student-presents-at-tech-titans-conference/ http://skylark.harker.org/hno/backups/harker-trio-gangs-up-on-global-warming/ http://skylark.harker.org/hno/backups/winged-post-reports-on-teen-tech-conference/ http://skylark.harker.org/hno/backups/sophomores-report-on-l-a-climate-conference/ http://skylark.harker.org/hno/backups/students-invited-to-climate-summit/
Tags: Featured Story, Green Initiatives, Outreach, topgreen