Semester in Review Academics
Presentation High School had a spectacular showing at the Synopsis Science Fair, led by sophomore Maya Varma’s multiple awards for her engineering project, “A Novel Wireless Microcontroller-Based Pulmonary Function Analyzer for Early Detection of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD).” Her awards included honorable mention in the engineering category; 3rd place student award and certificate of achievement from the American Vacuum Society’s Northern California Chapter; a certificate of achievement, medallion and letter from the United States Public Health Service, and the Award for Electro-Technology from the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers. Nine students placed at the Synopsis Science Fair, including the following 2nd-place category awards: • Jacqueline Duong (engineering, “Getting to the Pointe”) • Marissa Patterson and Chandler Sutherland (behavioral/social, “The Effect of Subliminal Messages on Hunger and Thirst”) • Anna Thomas (bioinformatics, “Automating Biomedical Image Segmentation with Random Forests”) Sophomore U.S. History classes were honored to host Jimi and Eiko Yamaichi (right), who spoke about living in Japanese internment camps. The two spent four years as teenage internees during World War II, and have since been committed to promoting understanding between various ethnic groups, along with civil liberties. At the ages of 91 and 89, they are dedicated to educating and sharing their stories across the country.
For the 2014 National Spanish Exam, 22 Presentation students (above) were chosen by their teachers to compete with 150,000 students nationwide. Maia Lwin, Krista Blazier, Julia Botkin and Vanuyen Pham all scored at or above the 97th percentile and earned a ranking of Gold for their respective divisions. All French students took the 2014 Le Grand Concourse, an annual competition sponsored by the American Association of Teachers of French. Dorothy Nguyen and Samhita Krishnan scored in the top 10% nationally for Level 1 and in the native speaker category, Kathleen Langlais placed 7th in the chapter and 15th nationally. The Presentation Robotics Team (below) won the FIRST Robotics Central Valley Regional and qualified for the World Championships in St. Louis.
Eesha Patel has been accepted into the highly competitive Summer COSMOS program at UC San Diego and will be working with Engineering Design and Control of Kinetic Sculptures. Nikita Srinivasan received a 3rd place award in the Northern California Youth Art Month Show for her acrylic shoe painting, “Worse than a Shaving Cut.” Anna Thomas advanced to the final round of the 2014 Presidential Scholars competition. From nearly 3.2 million graduating high school seniors, more than 4,000 students were identified as candidates in the program, and 565 semifinalists were selected from across the country. She was also named a semifinalist in both the Siemens Competition in Math, Science and Technology and the Intel Science Talent Search. Maya Varma won one of 10 national research grants from the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth, and she was a national semifinalist for the National Center for Women in Technology Aspirations Award. 20 | PRESENTATION HIGH SCHOOL
Athletics
The varsity track and field team had two home victories versus Sacred Heart Cathedral and Notre Dame-Belmont. Senior pole vault star Taylore Jaques won the West Catholic Athletic League title for a league-record fourth consecutive time. She qualified for the Central Coast Section track and field championships.