Student successes
High school senior Simone Prince-Eichner, a home-schooled Lummi Island student, has won “The Fountainhead” national essay contest held annually by the Ayn Rand Institute.
Prince-Eichner earned $10,000 for beating out more than 4,000 essay writers from around the world.
“The Fountainhead” essay contest requires contestants to write about one of several topics dealing with characters and themes in the novel of the same name.
The contest is open to 11th- and 12th-grade high school students.
In case you missed it, click here to read a story I wrote about a group of student inventors at Lynden High School who created a recumbent trike to help people who have physical limitations.
Members of the Lynden InvenTeam
This was a fun story to write about an impressive group of kids and their team leader, Dave Weidkamp, a Lynden High teacher.
The Lynden High School InvenTeam will unveil the recumbent tricycle members created for people with disabilities during an open house Tuesday, May 29.
The event begins at 4:30 p.m. with a meet and greet, followed by a presentation at 5 p.m. in the library of the high school, 1201 Bradley Road.
The team of student inventors from the high school created the tricycle using a $9,985 grant from the Lemelson-MIT InvenTeam program, which helps students pursue inventions and career goals related to science, technology, engineering and math.
Fifteen teams were awarded grants nationwide in the 2011-12 school year, with the Lynden team the only one in Washington state.
The Lynden team also is one of just four picked to present their invention June 20-23 at EurekaFest at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.
The team will present the tricycle, which uses a hydraulic lean mechanism controlled by a computer chip, June 20-23 at EurekaFest at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.
Details are online at web.mit.edu/inventeams/currentinventeams.html.
The organizers of the 2012 Washington State Math Championship said that Fairhaven Middle School students did pretty good in the competition, which was on April 28 at Blaine schools.
The 25th annual competition attracted 338 teams of fifth-, sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders — more than 1,300 students — from throughout the state.
The event included an individual test, followed by team competition in mental math, algebra, geometry and probability.
While Seattle-area schools typically take home the majority of awards, organizers said, Fairhaven Middle School fared well this year.
- In the sixth-grade individual test, Fairhaven student Tadeusz Pforte finished 10th (out of 356 sixth graders).
- In the sixth-grade team division, Fairhaven #3 finished 25th out of 89 teams.
- In the seventh-grade team division, Fairhaven team #2 finished 23rd out of 60 teams.
- In the eighth-grade team competition, Fairhaven #1 came in eighth out of 43 teams.
ConocoPhillips (now Phillips 66) in Ferndale and the Blaine School District hosted the competition.
Click here for complete results, as well as math questions and answers from the competition.
Simone Prince-Eichner, a Lummi Island high school student, has been awarded a $2,000 American Justice Essay Scholarship from the Washington State Association for Justice.
Prince-Eichner attends Prince Home School, and is one of two high school students to receive the scholarship.
The other is Marta Grzankowski of Olympia, according to the association formerly known as the Washington State Trial Lawyers Association.
Applicants were asked to watch the award-winning documentary “Hot Coffee” and write an essay that addressed the question: “Do caps on monetary damages undermine the 7th amendment right to trial by jury?”
“Hot Coffee” is about the controversial lawsuit involving the woman who was burned by McDonald’s coffee years ago.
A team from Whatcom Community College has placed third in the regional Pacific Rim Cyberdefense Competition.
The college’s cyberdefense team was among 11 that went head-to-head at Highline Community College in Des Moines, Wash., from March 24 to 25.
The University of Washington-Seattle and Eastern Washington University placed first and second respectively.
The contest involved student teams managing computer networks that were attacked by 30 people serving in the role of hackers.
Those attackers included representatives from the U.S. military and Boeing as well as civilian contractors from Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command.
The eight student competitors are enrolled in Whatcom’s Computer Information Systems program.
Whatcom student Travis McEwen was the team’s captain.
Team members were Josh Beckhusen, Brady Todhunter, Andrew Johnson, Cody Shoffit, Austin Bass, Tye Taylor and John Chapman.
Whatcom CIS instructor Corrinne Sande worked with the team.
In case you missed it, Western Washington University grad TJ Martin won an Academy Award Sunday night, Feb. 26, for his documentary, “Undefeated.”
Click here to read the story by Bellingham Herald columnist Dean Kahn.
Martin will be at WWU Thursday, March 1, for a free screening of the documentary, which focuses on a football team in inner-city Memphis, Tenn., as they search for respect and strive to end the high school’s legacy of losing.
The special showing will be 5 p.m. in the Performing Arts Center Mainstage.
Martin and co-director Daniel Lindsay won their Oscars in the documentary feature category.
Martin will be on campus earlier Thursday to talk to classes.
People had to register online for tickets to “Undefeated” at WWU. The only way someone without a ticket can attend is to show up early and hope a ticketholder is a no-show.
Free parking will be available in “C” lots on the south end of campus, with shuttle service provided to PAC.
While the tickets to “Undefeated” were free, donations are being accepted to support student scholarships.
Click here for a longer piece that Kahn wrote in the run-up to the Academy Awards.
T.J. Martin, a Western Washington University alumnus, will be on the Bellingham campus Thursday, March 1, for a screening of his Oscar-nominated documentary “Undefeated.”
The event is 5 p.m. in the Performing Arts Center Mainstage. It is open to the public.
T.J. Martin
Admission is free, but tickets are required. Get them by registering at the WWU Alumni Association website. A suggested donation of $5 to be applied toward Western student scholarships will be accepted at the door.
Martin will introduce his 114-minute film, talk about his experience at WWU, and answer questions from the audience.
“Undefeated” is about about an inner-city high school football’s team run for a playoff game — and respect.
It follows the Manassas Tigers’ 2009 football season – and the lives of the team’s inspirational coach and teens – as they attempt to win the first playoff game in the Memphis school’s 110-year history.
Martin, who is a Seattle native, was nominated, along with fellow filmmakers Dan Lindsay and Richard Middlemas, in the best documentary feature category.
The Academy Awards ceremony will be on Sunday, Feb. 26.
“Undefeated” is up against four other documentaries in its category.
A Western Washington University alum has been nominated for an Oscar for his documentary about an inner-city high school football’s team run for a playoff game — and respect.
Seattle native and Western alum T.J. Martin was nominated, along with fellow filmmakers Dan Lindsay and Richard Middlemas, in the best documentary feature category for “Undefeated.” The Academy Award nominees were announced Tuesday, Jan. 24.
The Academy Awards ceremony will be on Sunday, Feb. 26. “Undefeated” is up against four other documentaries in its category.
Here’s a synopsis of the film:
Set in the inner-city of Memphis, “Undefeated” chronicles the Manassas Tigers’ 2009 football season, on and off-the-field, as they strive to win the first playoff game in the high school’s 110-year history.
A perennial whipping boy, in recent decades Manassas had gone so far as to sell their home games to the highest bidder, but that all changed in the spring of 2004 when Bill Courtney, a former high school football coach turned lumber salesman, volunteered to lend a hand.
When he arrived, the team consisted of 17 players, some timeworn equipment and a patch of grass masquerading as a practice field.
Focusing more on winning young men than football games, the football program nevertheless began resurrecting itself and, in 2009, features the most talented team Manassas has ever fielded; a team that seems poised to end the playoff jinx that has plagued the school since time immemorial.
A coming-of-age documentary film, “Undefeated” provides audiences an intimate view of an underprivileged group of teens and their inspirational coach, as they attempt to make history.
See the clip below.
Two sophomores at St. Paul’s Academy in Bellingham have won a video contest for their short about the effects of PCBs on the health of Puget Sound.
Ali Anders and Melanie Bazlan created the nearly two-minute video for the contest put on by Facing the Future in Seattle. Titled “A World Without Whales,” the video shows people around Bellingham holding handwritten signs that detail the threat, and some of the solutions to the problem.
Their entry was one of three selected to receive the contest’s top prize of $300 and an HD Flip video camera, said Karl Frank, their science teacher.
He goes on to say that the video is “one of the best efforts I’ve seen from students in my ten years of teaching.”
Connect
Connect with us on the following social media platforms.