MARCH 2002 (VOL. 8, NO. 11)
M O N T H L Y
N E W S L E T T E R
HARKER
Harker’s Annual Dance Production Thurs., March March 14 14 Sat., March March 16 16 7:30 p.m. in the Saratoga gym $3 students, $5 adults Tickets Tickets limited limited Contact: laurar@harker.org laurar@harker.org
top stories Bucknall Bucknall jumps its heart out and raises $20,000 ............ 2
Saratoga - MS MS presents annual talent show .................................. 8
Saratoga - US US wrestlers win league championship ..................... 7
important dates Wed., Mar. 13, 7-8:30 p.m. US Winter Sports Awards BKN Gym Thurs., Mar. 21, 6-8 p.m. Freshman Parent College Night STG Gym Fri., Mar. 22 - Thurs., Mar. 28 Wash., D.C. Trip - Gr. 8 Fri., Mar. 29 Spring Break begins after school. No late supervision. No school for Gr. 8. Mon., April 8 Gr. K-12 classes resume
■ US physics teacher and club advisor Dr. Randal Harrington reported that the US Robotics Club, led by students Jerry Chi and Alan Malek, entered and won their first robotics competition last month. The competition, called “The Four-Can Challenge,” was sponsored by NASA’s Robotics Education Project and required the students to build and program a robot to move between two stacks of soda cans placed about 1.5 meters apart. “The robot had to move completely on its own and was controlled by a chip called the MC68HC11 mounted on a handyboard,” Dr. Harrington explained. The team, led by student programmer Alex Segal, programmed the chip using Interactive C and then uploaded the program to the board via a serial cable. The program was then stored on a EPROM (erasable programmable memory chip) that is located on the car itself. Touch sensors were mounted on the front and the back of the car so that when the car reached each set of cans, the car would reverse directions and return back to the starting point. The challenge was to build the robotically controlled car that would complete the round trip in the fastest time. NASA is repeating the competition next month and has renamed the event “The Beat Harker Four-Can Challenge” (go to http:// robotics.arc.nasa.gov/students/ challenge.htm). This spring the Robotics Club, which currently has ten members, will be competing in the more competitive National Ball Bot Competition, and we look for ward to their continued success! ■ MS math teacher Vandana Kadam is a recipient of the 20012002 Edyth May Sliffe Award for Excellence in teaching middle school math. This is a national honor from the Mathematics Association of America in recognition of her exemplary work in
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Alen Malek and Alex Segal of the Robotics Club team. promoting high standards and supporting strong curricular goals, as evidenced by the outstanding results of our students on the AMC8 math contest. K-8 Math Dept. Chair, Cindy Kerr, was a recipient of this prestigious recognition last year. Kudos to both teachers for ensuring that Harker students are receiving an excellent mathematics education. This national recognition is well deserved! ■ The Rotary Club recently selected the following Harker 11th graders to participate in this year’s Enterprise Leadership Conference March 6-8 at Asilomar State Conference Grounds in Pacific Grove: Julia Gitis, Alexandra Stanek,
Alex Iftimie, Poorav Patel, Sheena Reddy, Calvin Yu and Gabby DeMers. Two alternates are Brian Biskeborn and Rick Hayashi. There were more students accepted from Harker than from any other high school in the area—congratulations to our outstanding students!
The mission of the Leadership Conference is to enhance leadership skills of outstanding high school juniors through a working introduction to the oppor tunities, benefits and challenges of establishing a business or providing ser vices in the free enterprise system. Last year’s participants were Alan Liu, Leslie Hernandez, Liang Dong, Shaan Patel and Stephanie Tsai. Congratulations to this year’s representatives and a warm thank you to all the teachers who nominated the students and par ticipated in the application process and to all thirteen students who applied.
Editor’s Note: Harker’s expansion into an upper school prompted a fresh look at the way we communicated. We moved from quarterly magazines to weekly web updates to monthly Parent Pages, by campus, sent home to our families. Each has served a purpose. However, it has become increasingly evident that monthly schoolwide Harker news is of interest to all our families, friends and alumni, and to the media. Beginning with this issue, the HARKER NEWS will be a place where we will celebrate the entire Harker Community, whether it’s a kindergarten scrambled egg party, the middle school talent show or the first-ever league championship by our scrappy US wrestling team. Two campuses. One school. Go Harker! —Pam Dickinson, Director of Communications Remember to check the Parent Home Page for detailed calendars, updates and additional news between editions of the Harker News!