Schools & Military n Megan Lighty of Vienna has been named to the dean’s list for the fall semester at Pratt Institute. n James Preuss of Oakton has been named to the dean’s list for the fall semester at Pratt Institute. n Amy O’Connor of Oakton, a graduate of James Madison High School, has been named to the dean’s list for the fall semester at The Catholic University of America. n Benjamin Espey, William Kronmiller
and Rachel Smith of Great Falls; Austin Ralls of McLean; Gaeun Kim and Rahul Meka of Oakton; and Rachel Blacker, Christopher Sprague, Andrew Marmuto and Andrew Zhang of Vienna have been named to the dean’s list for the fall semester at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. n Adam Broeckaert and Caroline Russell of Great Falls, Victoria Holcomb of McLean and Benjamin Goldberg of Vienna have been named to the dean’s list for the fall semester at Lafayette College. n Jessica Graff of Vienna has been named to the dean’s list for the fall semester at the University of Iowa. n Camille Speer of Great Falls has been named to the dean’s list for the fall semester at Emerson College. n Thomas Endean, the son of Mr. and Mrs. Howard Endean of McLean and a 2014 graduate of Langley High School, has been named to the dean’s list for the fall semester at Bates College.
Sean Herman of McLean, Michael Wohl of Vienna, Samir Abdallah of Vienna, Adam Heilbrunn of Great Falls, Zachary Olmsted of Vienna and Joseph Olmsted of Vienna have been named to the dean’s list for the fall semester at Rochester Institute of Technology. n
n Justin Speros of Great Falls, Analea Von Seggern of McLean, Rebecca Coleman of Vienna, Morgan Duffy of Vienna, Ryan Medric of Vienna, Jessica Mollard of Vienna, Erica Schmidt of Vienna and Anna Soldano of Vienna have been named to the president’s list for the fall semester at Clemson University. n John “Jack” Brinkley of McLean, a graduate of Langley High School, has been named to the dean’s list for the fall semester at Michigan State University. n Cathryn Fitzgibbon of McLean, James Cunniff of Vienna, Kathleen Norton of Great Falls and Meredith Stinger of Dunn Loring have been named to the dean’s list for the fall semester at Loyola University Maryland.
Nathanael Wilson of Dunn Loring, Ryan Fischer of Great Falls, Laura n
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Jameson of Great Falls, Leonardo Adams of McLean, Jake Huber of McLean, Thomas Rippert of McLean, Carrie Anne Shawkey of McLean, Elizabeth Goodiel of Oakton, Victoria Coleman of Vienna, Courtney Schneider of Vienna, Lisa Shade of Vienna and Rachel Anne Waldron of Vienna have been named to the dean’s list for the fall semester at Clemson University. n Anne Ryland of Great Falls, a student at the University of Dallas, has had works accepted for presentation at the international convention of Sigma Tau Delta, the international English honor society. Ryland will attend the convention and read scholarly work aloud to the audience. n Potomac School seniors Ryan Kelly, Kevin O’Leary and Gianmarco Terrones have been named National Merit Finalists by the National Merit Scholarship Corp. The three are among a pool of 15,000 finalists chosen from among 1.5 million students based on scores on the Preliminary SAT test, and will now compete for 7,400 National Merit Scholarships being offered in the spring. Scholarships will be offered based on students’ abilities, skills, accomplishments and academic achievement. n A team of five students from George C. Marshall High School took top honors in the Virginia LifeSmarts competition, held recently in Richmond. Team members Ethan Epstein, Sam Hassett, Jessica Lewis, Thea Prevalsky and Quiana Dang competed in individual and collaborative tests and quiz-bowl-type rounds against other teams in preliminary contests, ultimately defeating the former state champions in the final round. Two of the team members placed first in the state in their individual categories: Prevalsky in the environmental category, and Lewis in the consumer rights and responsibilities category. With the win, the Marshall team advances to the LifeSmarts National competition in Denver in April. LifeSmarts is an educational program of the National Consumers League for students in grades 6-12 that prepares them to enter the real world as smart adult consumers. Participants focus on five areas: consumer rights and responsibilities, the environment, health and safety, personal finance, and technology. Content is revised to keep up with current developments in these areas and complements the curriculum in middle and high schools. n Matthew Sun, a senior at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science & Technology, will be recognized by LearnServe International for co-founding Synapps LLC, which develops apps for students by students. Through the LearnServe Incubator in 2015, Sun created the Synapse Apprenticeship Program, enbabling students to
Gianmarco Terrones, Kevin O’Leary and Ryan Kelly, seniors at Potomac School, have been named National Merit Finalists.
earn service hours and gain experience by building apps and Web sites for local organizations. n Langley High School freshman Samina Mondal won the Congressional App Challenge for the 10th District with her app, Spotted. Mondal created a mobile application that allows users to browse through animals at the Fairfax County Animal Shelter to determine which pet may best suit them by using multiple filters, providing a safe and efficient way for pets to be adopted. Mondal is the founder of Langley and Fairfax County’s first Girls Who Code club. The Congressional App Challenge is a competition aimed at encouraging high school students to learn how to code by creating their own applications. The challenge is intended to highlight the value of computer science and STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) education and encourage students to engage in these fields. More than 1,700 students signed up to participate in the 2015 challenge
Eric Lin, a sophomore at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science & Technology, won the top prize in the David D. Dubois Piano Competition, held recently at Bowling Green State University. Lin was praised by judges for a technically refined performance that exhibited maturity across a broad range of styles in the pieces he selected for the competition. Lin performed Beethoven’s Sonata in C minor, as well as a required classical era sonata, and Frederic Chopin’s Scherzo No. 3 as well as two 20th-century works, a Bela Bartok etude and a movement from Samuel Barber’s Sonata in E-flat Major. n
Austin Fridenberg, the son of James and Chandell Fridenberg of Vienna and a sophomore at Randolph-Macon Academy, received an honorable-mention award in the school’s science fair. His project focused on the possibility of using a watermelon as a cell-phone charger. Fridenberg now moves on to regional competition, to be held March 8 at James Madison University. n
n Students at Cooper Middle School have been collecting school supplies for the Aschiana School in Afghanistan un-
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der the guidance of math teacher Mary Jacobs. Jacobs met the first lady of Afghanistan, Rula Ghani, who talked about how difficult it was to educate Afghani children who had been displaced by war, while speaking on behalf of the Aschiana Foundation in Washington, Ghani stressed the importance of educating these children, and that through education, they would be able to have a better life. Cooper students rose to the challenge, gathering paper, pencils and other supplies, and even creating fillable storybooks for the Aschiana students to express their interests mathematically through words, equations, tables and graphs. n U.S. Rep. Barbara Comstock (R10th) has announced details for the 2016 Congressional Art Competition for Virginia’s 10th District. The competition is open to all highschool students who reside in the district, with the winner having his or her artwork displayed in the U.S. Capitol for a year and the runners-up having their work displayed in Comstock’s office. “We had a wonderful competition last year, with over 180 submissions . . . that reflected a wide variety of artistic expressions,” Comstock said in a statement. Completed artwork must be dropped off on April 11 at the George Washington University Virginia Science & Technology Campus. Full details can be found on the Web site at https://comstock.house.gov. n Virginia ranks sixth in the nation in percentage of students who qualify for college credit through the Advanced Placement (AP) program, according to figures reported by the College Board. A total of 29.8 percent of the commonwealth’s graduating seniors in 2015 earned a score of “3” or higher (on a 1-to5 scale) on at least one AP exam. That’s well above the national average of 22.4 percent. Virginia ranked behind only Maryland (31.7 percent), Massachusetts (31.5 percent), Florida (30.7 percent), Connecticut (30.4 percent) and California (30.2 percent) in 2015, according to College Board figures. A total of 35,242 Virginia publicschool students in the Class of 2015 took at least one Advanced Placement course during their high-school careers. The most popular courses among the group were U.S. History; English Language and Composition; U.S. Government and Politics; English Literature and Composition; Psychology; World History; Calculus AB; Statistics; Biology; and Environmental Science. While there is no “passing” score on Advanced Placement exams, many colleges offer credit to students who score “3” or higher on individual tests.
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