School news: Week of July 5
Aditi Chattopadhyay
Tyler Besselman
Meaghan Mescan
Markovitz
Garcia
Malcom Miller
Murphy Miller
Durrani
Warmbein
Leyzarovich
Published article
Upper St. Clair High School senior Aditi Chattopadhyay can add published author to her resume of accomplishments. Her paper titled, “Demonstration Study: A Protocol to Combine Online Tools and Databases for Identifying Potentially Repurposable Drugs,” was published on MDPI.com, a platform for peer-reviewed, scientific open-access journals.
The paper was written as a follow up to her Pennsylvania Junior Academy of Science project, completed during her junior year. Her research mentor taught her that the most important part of science is communicating your work.
“This project is very simply a protocol to identify pre-existing FDA-approved drugs that can be repurposed to treat other diseases, especially those that are not currently treatable. So, the real-life implications of the research were a motivating factor for me to both pursue this project and write a paper on it,” Aditi said. “Additionally, since this project allows other scientists and even students to predict potential repurposable drugs using the protocol we created, it was important to write and publish this paper to disseminate the knowledge and results for more extensive use.”
One of the key challenges for Aditi was conforming to the format and style of scholarly research papers.
“Scientific papers have their own specific format you have to follow. For example, there is usually an abstract, introduction, methods and discussion with certain information and explanations going into each section,” she said. “Since I had little experience writing a research paper before, figuring this out was a bit of a challenge.”
Another aspect of this type of published scientific writing is the peer-review process, which can be both arduous and time-consuming.
“Once I sent out the first draft to the journal, different academics from all over the world reviewed the draft and sent us comments on what they thought was lacking or needed to be fixed in the paper,” she added. “Addressing those comments by explaining our ideas and the methodology of the research in a simple, concise way was pretty challenging.”
In total, the process from initial submission to publication took approximately six months. Aditi will attend Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science this fall.
Language scholarship
Upper St. Clair High School senior Tyler Besselman was recently awarded a National Security Language Initiative for Youth scholarship for 2017-18. Tyler will study at the Wenzao Ursuline University of Languages in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, from August 2017 through June 2018.
While in Taiwan, Tyler will reside with a Taiwanese host family and will participate in 14 hours of intensive Mandarin Chinese instruction per week. In addition, he will receive one-on-one Chinese tutoring, four hours of elective university courses as well as monthly cultural activities and excursions.
Scholarship recipient
Meaghan Mescan, an eighth-grade student at Saint Anne School in Castle Shannon, has been awarded the Cardinal Donald Wuerl Scholarship from Junior Achievement of Western Pennsylvania. The Cardinal Wuerl Scholarship is worth $3,000 and is awarded to eighth-grade students in Western PA who are currently attending a Catholic grade school within the Dioceses of Altoona/Johnstown, Erie, Greensburg or Pittsburgh and will be entering a Catholic high school within those Dioceses in 2017. Recipients of this scholarship were recommended by their school, must have received at least two Junior Achievement classroom programs at a Catholic grade school, and had to submit an essay answering the question: “How has Junior Achievement influenced your life in your diocesan school?”
Meaghan was recently honored with her family at the Junior Achievement 2017 Diocesan Award and Scholarship Presentation Luncheon held at the LeMont Restaurant. She will be attending Seton-LaSalle Catholic High School in the fall.
Math Olympiad
A team of Boyce Middle School students was named to the National Math Olympiad Honor Roll for scoring in the top 10 percent among 3,154 teams from 44 countries in the international Mathematical Olympiads for Elementary and Middle School program. Phillip Markovitz was one of only 71 sixth-graders out of 77,774 students in his division to earn the Dr. George Lenchner Medallion, in recognition for achieving a perfect score.
Winners of the Gold Pin for scoring in the top 2 percent of all registered students were sixth-graders Phillip Markovitz, Alex Todd, Ben Wasson, Quinton Miller, Keshav Narasimhan and Evan Sarkett as well as fifth-graders Brian McFerran, Lucas Bishop and Leona Chen.
Silver pins were awarded to 15 Boyce students who scored among the top 10 percent including: sixth-graders Rebecca Lang, Carter McClintock-Comeaux, Sahil Bhalodia, Maya Leyzarovich, John Scherer, Jasmine Dietiker, Carter Chui, Matthew Earley, Colin Liang and Mariah Ranier as well as fifth-graders Libby Eannarino, Alex Sun, Mahir Parmar and Arya Patel.
Mathletes participated in a series of five monthly contests of five problems each from November through March as well as weekly practice sessions under the supervision and coaching of Kathy Hoedeman, math resource teacher.
DAR honors students
The Bethel Fife and Drum Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution recently honored five area seniors with the DAR Good Citizen Award. One eighth-grader won the American History Essay Contest.
The DAR Good Citizens Award rewards individuals who possess good citizenship qualities of dependability, service, leadership and patriotism in their homes, schools and communities. Teachers and peers select the students. Once a student is chosen as the DAR Good Citizen they are invited to participate in the scholarship portion of the program by submitting an essay. This year’s theme was “Our American Heritage and Our Responsibility for Preserving It. How Do the Actions of Many Good Citizens Keep Our Nation Moving Forward?”
The following seniors were the winners in their school districts: Natalie Weida, Baldwin-Whitehall; Kayla Ruslavage, Canon-McMillan; Harrison Ulery, Mt. Lebanon; Audrey King, Thomas Jefferson and Mahima Reddy, Upper St. Clair. Reddy was selected as the Bethel Fife and Drum Chapter winner and received a $100 award.
The American History Essay Contest winner was Colin Barrett representing Thomas Jefferson Middle School in Mt. Lebanon.
For more information about the Bethel Fife and Drum Chapter, visit bethelfifeanddrum.org.
National Merit scholarships
Three members of the Upper St. Clair High School class of 2017 have earned college-sponsored Merit Scholarship awards through the National Merit Scholarship Corporation and their respective universities. Awardees include: Devon Dewey Garcia – National Merit University of Central Florida Scholarship; Malcolm T. Miller – National Merit University of Maryland Scholarship; Murphy S. Miller – National Merit Clemson University Scholarship.
Students entered the scholarship competition by completing the PSAT, the National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test, during their junior year. From approximately 1.5 million students who entered the 2017 National Merit Scholarship Program, only about 16,000 – the top 1 percent – were named Semifinalists. In order to advance in the competition and be considered for a Merit Scholarship award, a Semifinalist had to become a Finalist by fulfilling several requirements that included submitting a detailed scholarship application and presenting a record of very high academic performance.
The program awards three types of scholarships: National Merit $2,500 Scholarships, Corporate-Sponsored Merit Scholarships and College-Sponsored Merit Scholarships.
German Club awards
The Bethel Park High School German Club presented two awards and one scholarship to three Bethel Park High School German students.
Freshman Brandon Janus, a student in the Honors II German Class, received the Dietrich Award of Academic Excellence, which is given to the BPHS German student who has the most outstanding academic performance throughout the school year.
Senior Ryan Pfab, a student in the AP German V Class, received a Certificate of Recognition as the most outstanding member of the BPHS Chapter of the Delta Epsilon Phi German National Honor Society for the 2016-2017 school year.
Junior Tyler Crider, a student in the Honors German II Class, was awarded a Summer Study Scholarship to attend the Millersville University Summer German Camp for one week in July. Tyler received this award based on his exceptional commitment and enthusiasm for the BPHS German Club, as well as his study of German at Bethel Park High School.
Bethel Park High School German Teacher Christopher Tobias teaches the students.
Speech competition
Two Upper St. Clair High School seniors finished among the top 10 in the nation in the National Catholic Forensic League Grand Nationals May 27-18 in Louisville, Ky.
Raahema Durrani earned a spot in the National Final Round of the Lincoln Douglas Debate, finishing second on a 3-2 decision – one ballot from a National Championship. Erik Warmbein was a semifinalist in Dramatic Performance – finishing seventh in the nation.
“Upper St. Clair had an incredible weekend at NCFL Grand Nationals,” Ben Edwards, forensics sponsor, said. “Thousands of students qualified from around the country to compete.”
In addition to Raahema and Erik, seniors Arushi Kewalramani and Macey Kaplan qualified for the play-in round of Public Forum Debate and finished in the top 50 nationally.
Perfect ACT score
Dina Leyzarovich, daughter of Gene and Julia Leyzarovich of Upper St. Clair and a rising junior at Upper St. Clair High School, earned the highest possible ACT composite score of 36. On average, less than one-tenth of 1 percent of students who take the ACT earn a top score. In the U.S. high school graduating class of 2016, only 2,235 out of nearly 2.1 million graduates who took the ACT earned a composite score of 36. The ACT consists of tests in English, mathematics, reading and science, each scored on a scale of 1-36. A student’s composite score is the average of the four test scores. Some students also take the optional ACT writing test, but the score for that test is reported separately and is not included within the ACT composite score.
BPHS receives grant
Bethel Park High School Science Teachers Monica Graziani and Alex Winschel received a $600 Equipment Grant from the Spectroscopy Society of Pittsburgh for laboratory equipment that will enhance students’ understanding of spectroscopy, which is the study of interaction between matter and light.
With the grant, the teachers were able to purchase SpectroVis Plus Spectrophotometers, which will be used in Biology and Chemistry classes to study light. The equipment is compatible with the one-to-one Chromebooks the students use on a daily basis, as well as the LabQuest software the students have access to in the Science Laboratory.
The award was presented at a May 24 award ceremony hosted by the Spectroscopy Society of Pittsburgh on the Duquesne University campus.