Anand Natarajan, Gr. 12, recently won an individual silver medal and helped his team take the silver prize at the sixth International Olympiad in Linguistics (IOL) in Sunny Beach, Bulgaria in early August.
Natarajan was included in one of two teams representing the United States at the event. He was the only Harker student to make U.S. Team 1, taking fourth place in the North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad (NACLO), out of an original pool of nearly 800 participants. He is also a member of Harker’s World Language Club, in which students solve linguistic problems all year-round.
In addition to the U.S., 15 other teams from 10 countries took part in the IOL, including Bulgaria, Germany, Estonia, South Korea, Latvia, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Slovenia and Sweden.
Geared specifically to high-school students, IOL contestants solve problems related to a wide variety of languages. This year’s contest had students solve problems dealing with Micmac (spoken by Native Americans in Canada), Old Norse, New Caledonia’s Drehu and Cemi languages, southern Mexico’s Copainala Zoque, and Inuktikut (the language of the Canadian Inuit people). A final team exercise dealt with various Chinese dialects. For this contest, students used the same skills utilized by linguistics researchers and scholars.
Awards were given for the best solutions to a single problem, the highest total of the combined scores to each solution, and to the team scoring the most points in the contest. Natarajan received a silver medal for the total accumulation of his scores, and his team’s total score netted them a silver award.
In addition to winning gold, silver and bronze medals in the team and individual contests, the U.S. also received the highest cumulative score. The U.S. won 11 of the 33 awards given at the Olympiad, including two gold medals.
Staff members of the Talon and Winged Post visited New York City in late June and early July to attend a summer journalism camp by the Columbia Scholastic Press Association. Accompanied by US journalism advisor and activities director Chris Daren, the students got to take in the many sights and sounds of the City That Never Sleeps, including Central Park, Coney Island and the Statue of Liberty.
Harker journalists also did very well at the camp, winning several awards. The Talon staff earned the top honor in the Achievement in Theme category, while level one and level two layout awards were given to Isha Kawatra, Gr. 10 and Brianna Tran, Gr. 11, respectively. Design awards were received by junior Dawn Queen for Outstanding Headline Package and by the team of Queen and fellow junior Monisha Appalaraju for Outstanding Secondary Module (for example, a sidebar).
In Newspaper Awards, Shreya Nathan, Gr. 11, won for Best Personality Profile, Malika Mehrotra, Gr. 11, for Best Section Design and Mahum Jamal, Gr. 12, for Top All-Around Journalist.
Other highlights of the trip included an interview with Scott Harrison of charity:water, visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art, attending a production of “Billy Elliot” on Broadway and catching an advance screening of the new CBS show “The Good Wife,” after which the group spotted the show’s star, Julianna Margulies, two rows ahead of them at a production of “Mary Stuart”! Not to mention enjoying the many storied food establishments located throughout the city.
In all, a trip that was just as rewarding academically as it was recreationally!
The 2008 edition of enlight’ning continues to rack up awards. In late March, the literature magazine beat out two others for the Columbia Scholastic Press Association’s (CSPA) Gold Crown Award. This is the second year in a row the magazine has won the top award. Among other specific compliments paid the issue, the CSPA noted in its CD-ROM, “2009 Crown Winners,” the following enlight’ning strengths: “From cover to cover, staff branded this publication an exceptional literary journal, visually professional in appearance, format, use of color and illustration throughout. Purposeful choice of color palette and use of white space further distinguish this publication. The clean lines of this publication exemplify the fact that each visual and written piece was tightly edited. There is an acute attention to detail in the editorial process.”
Of one page in particular, CSPA reviewers wrote: “The stark quality of the poem ‘Algebra’ is paired with the proportional design of ‘Quilt Squares’ – two works of art that do more than share space. Together, they provide a unique perspective.”
“Needless to say we are really proud!” said teacher Stacie Newman, who, along with Michael Schmidt, advises the staff. “We owe a great debt to all the middle school students whose work was offered for the magazine; their contributions were outstanding, and without them we couldn’t create a winning publication!” she added.