Schools to host retirement celebration for Dr. Plano next week
Current and former School Board Directors are inviting students, teachers, staff, families and community members to a retirement celebration for Mercer Island School District Superintendent Dr. Gary Plano. The event will be from 4:30-6 p.m. on June 15 in the Northwood Elementary Commons.
Three MIHS juniors to attend summer aerospace program
Three Mercer Island High School students have been selected to participate in the second phase of the Washington Aerospace Scholars (WAS) program. They are Alicia Chen, Maverick Emerson and Donald Hildebrandt.
WAS is designed to connect high school juniors with educational and career opportunities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) through independent learning, hands-on interaction, professional guidance, and site-based tours.
In December 2016, these motivated students were among the 200 who began competing for a spot in one of the WAS Summer Residency sessions by completing 10 NASA and University of Washington designed lessons-Phase One of the WAS program. Students were able to register to earn five UW credits based on successful completion of the curriculum.
The students’ academic performance on the WAS Phase One curriculum qualified them for Phase Two, a six-day experience held at Seattle’s Museum of Flight during three sessions throughout June and July. In each summer session, four student teams cooperate to plan a human mission to Mars with support from professional engineers/ scientists, university students, and certificated educators. Additionally, participants receive briefings from aerospace professionals, tour local engineering facilities, and compete in hands-on engineering challenges.
Mercer Island teams place in top 20 at Destination Imagination Global Finals
Three Mercer Island teams are among the best in the world by virtue of their outstanding results in the global Destination Imagination event held recently in Knoxville, Tenn.
Destination Imagination is an educational program in which student teams solve open-ended challenges and present their solutions at tournaments. This year 1,600 teams from around the world competed in this international tournament, with 80 to 90 in each division.
“As always, I was very impressed with the behavior of our students,” said Mark Headlee, teacher at West Mercer Elementary, who coaches all three teams. “They all worked very hard and devoted many hours during the tournament making last minute refinements trying to achieve the highest result possible.”
Team “This Isn’t Legible” (pictured below) finished in fourth place in the Middle School Structural Challenge. Team members are Landon Schmidt-Warnecke, Jake Chansky, Max Zhao, Kevin Wang, Wesley Ho, Sam Frohlich, and Justin Lesko, all from Islander Middle School.
Team “Syntax Error” finished 10th in the Secondary Level Technical Challenge. Team members are Alex White, Damien Snyder, Andrew Motz, Ethan Torok, William Lacrampe, Derek Wang, and Nico Galvin, all from Mercer Island High School.
Team “Who Cares?” representing Islander Middle School, West Mercer and Northwood Elementary, finished 20th in the Elementary Level Structural Engineering challenge. Team Members are Eliot Geer, Quinn Shavey, Sidh Shroff, Keegan Wang, Julius Perez, Ethan Mar and Daniel Marcus.
