WW-P Science Bowl Winners
The Grover Middle School Science Bowl team was the first place winner in the regional science bowl. “The students have worked hard all year to become proficient at science questions, and in the regional competition, they were undefeated and heading to the National Science Bowl in April,” says Rae McKenna, the advisor for the group.
Community Service
Girl Scout Troop 70216 recently visited the Hamilton Continuing Care Center to deliver a gingerbread village and a quilt that the girls had made for the residents. The quilt included squares with positive messages designed by each girl.
Troop members include Chloe Berger, Saachi Bedi, Allie Dignan, Radhika Gupta, Anna Henkel, Emma Kothari, Kacy Lane, Julia Laresch, Chloe Madison, Kate McManus, Shivani Patel, Reagan Ritterbush, Jade Rowland, Aashna Tilve, and Ritu Vyas. Their leader is Kate Henkel.
For information about joining Girl Scouts as a scout or adult volunteer, contact Louisa Ho at 609-371-2119 or E-mail girlscoutswwp@verizon.net.
Future Problem Solvers
Community Middle School students were honored at a recent Future Problem Solvers competition. The four grade 6 Community Middle School Future Problem Solver teams have been invited to the Future Problem Solvers State Bowl in mid-March. Three grade 8 Future Problem Solver teams also will be competing at the bowl.
Talia Lang, a grade 7 student, earned first place in scenario writing in the recent competition. Her project, “Homo Plasticus,” focused on the topic of emergency planning. Her writing now will be judged by the international judging panel against other winning scenarios from other states and countries.
Grover Middle School Future Problem Solvers were also winners in the recent competition. Amrita Suresh took first place in the junior division of the New Jersey Future Problem Solving Scenario writing contest and will compete in the international competition in June.
Second place was awarded to Sharon Zhang; and third place was awarded to Audrey Tran. In the middle division, Angela You achieved third place.
Top Volunteer
Rujul Zaparde of Plainsboro received a top youth volunteer award from Prudential Spirit of Community. The nationwide program honors young people for outstanding acts of volunteerism. A junior at Lawrenceville School, Zaparde co-founded a nonprofit organization that has motivated more than 450 students at 23 schools to raise funds that have been used to build more than 30 water wells in rural India.
When he visited India with his family in 2007 he noticed that the village of Paras did not have fresh water. “The villagers had to walk a few kilometers each way to reach the nearest water source — and that water wasn’t even clean,” he said in a press release. “I was astounded. I couldn’t even begin to imagine what it would be like to live in such a village.”
He was determined to raise money to build a well and eight months later he had raised $1,000 through bake sales, a car wash, and soliciting donations. After returning to India to build the well he realized that he wanted to do more, build more wells, and help more villagers.
He started “Drinking Water for India” and made presentations at other schools. Close to three-dozen poor villages in India have new wells. “Clean water is a basic right,” he says. “All deserve to have access to it.”
He will receive $1,000, an engraved silver medallion, and an all-expense paid trip to Washington, D.C. to join the top two honorees from other states for national recognition events. Ten of them will be named America’s top youth volunteers at that time.
In College
Washington University in St. Louis: Adeetee Bhide, a senior majoring in biology has been awarded a scholarship to attend Churchill College at the University of Cambridge for her M. Phil degree. She graduated from High School North in 2007.
Only 14 scholars are selected each year from among 103 American colleges and universities. The scholarship covers tuition and all fees for graduate study, $25,500 to $28,000 a year, depending on the course of study, as well as a living and travel allowance from $16,500 to $20,000.
“I applied for the scholarship without any expectations of receiving it because I know how prestigious it is,” says Bhide, who was awarded a Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship in May 2010. “I cannot even begin to express how honored I feel to have received it and how excited I am for next year.”
Her college years have also included studies of hearing loss in the lab of Jianxin Bao, research associate professor of otolaryngology; and subtleties affecting diagnoses of and treatments for Parkinson’s disease in the lab of Joel S. Perlmutter, professor of neurology.
Bhide worked on her honors thesis, “The Effect of Orthographic Neighborhood Size on the Extent of Priming” in the neuroimaging lab of Bradley Schlaggar, associate professor of neurology. She spent last semester as a teaching assistant in the laboratory of neurophysiology taught by Erik Herzog, associate professor of biology.
