School News: Week of May 12
From left are Bethel Park High School students Evan Yoder, Camden Wade, Ashton Maslanda and Calvin Walsh.
From left are Bethel Park High School students Aidan Tarr, Brian Pauley and Maggie Browning.
Bethel Park High School junior Caleb Shook is the highest-placing BPHS student at the 2019 DECA International Career Development Conference.
Baker Elementary School students participate in the Pittsburgh Kids Marathon.
Bethel Park
• Bethel Park High School students in Alex Winschel’s honors biology class and Sean O’Brien’s environmental biology class won four awards in the Research Experience For Teachers Design Team Competition, sponsored by the Human Engineering Research Laboratories and the Rehabilitation Science and Technology Department of the University of Pittsburgh and held in conjunction with the National Science Foundation.
Honors biology sophomore Evan Yoder and freshmen Ashton Maslanka, Camden Wade and Calvin Walsh earned first place in the Science and Math category and second place in Best Project.
Environmental biology senior Brian Pauley and juniors Maggie Browning and Aidan Tarr earned third place and won the Best Design Award. Both groups of students submitted entries that were designed to help honeybees.
The students were concerned about the declining honeybee population, so they focused their efforts on developing ways for the bees to conserve more energy and have more time to pollenate flowers and produce more honey.
The students designed a honeycomb on Tinkercad and used the 3-D printer in their classroom to print out their designs. Bethel Park High School Biology Teacher Alex Winschel took the honeycombs and inserted them into the bee hive he has at his home, containing 40,000 bees.
In addition to the honeycomb creation, the students also did research and created a poster about the honeybees.
Winschel and O’Brien participated in a Research Experience for Teachers Class last summer at the University of Pittsburgh, and encouraged their students to enter this contest that was offered in conjunction with the class.
• Bethel Park High School students came home with 15 awards from the DECA International Career Development Conference, which was held April 26 through May 1 in Orlando, Fla., including one second-place award, one top-20 finalist award, 11 awards of excellence and two medallion awards.
More than 20,000 students from the United States and 10 other countries participated in this event. Students competed against at least 200 other students or teams in each event.
Bethel Park junior Caleb Shook finished in second place in the Human Resources Management event, and also earned an award of excellence for meeting all standards of performance, and two medallion awards for finishing in the top 10 in the Test and Role Play B portions of the competition.
Sophomore Michael Conroy was a top-20 finalist and an award of excellence recipient in the Public Relations Plan event, representing teammates Julia Casaldi, Amber Simeone and Makayla Yee, who were unable to attend the conference.
Also earning awards of excellence were senior Tyler Andreis and junior Mark Vighetti (Buying and Merchandising Operations Research); senior Alexis Schanck and junior Brian Torles (Hospitality and Tourism Operations Research); juniors Jenna Chernicky and Sarah Gilliam (Financial Literacy Promotion Plan), Marissa Christenson (Community Service Project), Hunter Dorfner (Hospitality and Tourism Operations Research), Olivia Greene (Creative Marketing Plan), Brenna Manko (Community Service Project); and sophomores Morgan Beardsley and Lianna Robbins (Entrepreneurship Innovation Plan) and Nick Massari and Ryan Puskar (Entrepreneurship Promotion Plan).
The students were prepared for this competition by Bethel Park High School marketing teachers Emily Smoller and Maria Christenson.
Upper St. Clair
• A team of Upper St. Clair High School sophomores placed first at the Cultural Communications Alliance’s Marketing Competition on April 30 at the University of Pittsburgh’s College of Business Administration. Team members are Olivia Fera, Claudia Ng, Maddie Nolen, Katherine Li and Richa Mahajan.
The six teams in the competition were tasked with preparing a marketing strategy to introduce GNC’s Earth Genius SuperFoods Supreme to Japan.
The Upper St. Clair students were able to gain insight into the Japanese culture from Sensei Ramsey, Japanese teacher at Upper St. Clair High School.
Each team delivered a 12-minute presentation to a panel of four judges, which was followed by a three-minute question and answer session. Second place went to Pine-Richland High School and third place went to Pittsburgh CAPA.
• Baker Elementary School was named the Rookie Site of the Year for the Kids of STEEL program, an honor bestowed on the largest new site to the program. The announcement was made on May 4 at the starting line of the Pittsburgh Kids Marathon.
Kids of STEEL is an award-winning physical activity and nutrition program offered free of charge to any interested classroom, school or youth organization. During training, participants complete the equivalent of 26.2 miles, the distance of a full marathon, of physical activity at school, during a before or after school program, or at home with their families.
Throughout the 10-week program, students trained after school twice a week under the leadership of school nurse Holly Fisher and PTA volunteer Melissa DePuy along with many other Baker staff members and parent volunteers.
The culminating activity for the Kids of STEEL program is the one-mile Pittsburgh Kids Marathon, which begins on the North Shore and runs across the Clemente Bridge and finishes at the official finish line downtown.