Alicia Chow, Tanner Riley, and Thomas Yoo, seniors at Hawaii Preparatory Academy (HPA), have been named finalists in the 62nd annual National Merit Scholarship Program. Dana Petteys, HPAʻs interim dean of academics, made the announcement.

Chow, Riley, and Yoo will continue in the competition for 7,500 National Merit Scholarships worth about $33 million that will be offered this spring.

Chow, the daughter of Ivan Chow and Lynda Chao of Kamuela, is fluent in English and Mandarin. She is fascinated with understanding how humans communicate their most important messages and has initiated three self-directed research projects. In linguistics, she has studied Latin and translation theory independently and through Stanfordʻs summer program; in anthropology, she is analyzing and comparing various aspects of Hawaiian, Greek, and Roman mythologies; in information technology, she is evaluating the schoolʻs current use of social media and offering suggestions for improvement.

Riley, the son of Bryan and Tara Riley of Kailua-Kona, is a dedicated member of HPAʻs theater department and has had leading roles in a number of productions at the school. He has completed two Hilo Marathons and the Maui Marathon as part of HPAʻs training group. He currently is working on an independent project at the HPA Energy Lab, studying how sleep relates to memory in high school students. Riley has traveled extensively to the Philippines, Norway, and England doing humanitarian work. Last summer, he earned a highly-competitive scholarship through the National Institute of Health (NIH) to attend a bio-med neuroscience camp in Ventura Harbor, California.

Yoo, the son of Sae Keun Yoo and Sun Won Moon of Seoul, Korea, is a dedicated member of the schoolʻs cross-country team and theater department. He also is founder and president of the HPA Cultural Inquiries Club. Last summer, Yoo interned in the marketing department of Delphi in Seoul, an auto parts company that supplies Hyundai Motors. Yoo is fluent in English and Korean.

National Merit Scholarship winners of 2017 will be announced beginning in April and concluding in July. These scholarship recipients will join more than 323,000 other distinguished young people who have earned the Merit Scholar title.

By LaClaire Henderson '18

Four, epic, years on the volleyball court has lead up to this...Ghar Pautz '17 will take on his senior season in Castle Gymnasium. Coming off of the soccer pitch as a BIIF and state champion, Pautz is ready to begin his final season playing the game he loves.

"I have watched him grow as a player and as a young man for four years now," Coach Sharon Peterson says when talking about Pautz.

Ghar started playing volleyball when he was a freshman, and at the end of the season Coach Peterson pulled him up to varsity after one of their starters were injured just before the BIIF playoffs.

"From the beginning, Ghar has always been very serious about the game especially after he started playing club during his sophomore year," Peterson says.

Since 1923, the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards have recognized the vision, ingenuity, and talent of our nation's youth, and provided opportunities for creative teens to be celebrated. Each year, increasing numbers of teens participate in the program—young artists and writers, filmmakers and photographers, poets and sculptors, video game artists and science fiction writers, along with countless educators who support and encourage the creative process. Last year, students submitted nearly 320,000 across 29 different categories of art and writing.

Our seventh grade students entered the category of poetry, each creating an original portfolio of their poetry during the first semester of seventh grade English.

Winners: Lexi Anakalea (Silver Star Medal), Ruby Helmuth (Honorable Mention), Emily Thompson (Honorable Mention), Sofia Howard (Honorable Mention), William Wawner (Honorable Mention), Sydney Chin (Honorable Mention), and Forest McKinney (Honorable Mention)

Students' submissions are blindly adjudicated by some of the foremost leaders in the visual and literary arts. Many Scholastic Awards Alumni have lent their expertise as jurors, including Michael Bierut, Phillip Pearlstein, Edward Sorel, Red Grooms, and Gary Panter. Other luminaries who have served as judges include Langston Hughes, Robert Frost, Judy Blume, Francine Prose, David Sedaris, Lesley Stahl, Nikki Giovanni, Roz Chast, Wangechi Mutu, and Waris Ahluwalia. Jurors look for works that exemplify the Awards' core values: originality, technical skill, and the emergence of personal voice or vision.

Since its founding, the Awards have established an amazing track record for identifying the early promise of our nation's most accomplished and prolific creative leaders. Alumni include artists Andy Warhol, Philip Pearlstein, Cy Twombly, Robert Indiana, Kay WalkingStick, and John Baldessari; writers Sylvia Plath, Truman Capote, Bernard Malamud, Myla Goldberg, and Joyce Carol Oates; photographer Richard Avedon; actors Frances Farmer, Robert Redford, Alan Arkin, Lena Dunham, and John Lithgow; fashion designer Zac Posen; and filmmakers Stan Brakhage, Ken Burns, and Richard Linklater.

The HPA Community Book Club will meet at 7 p.m. on Thursday, March 9, in the Dyer Library, Upper Campus. Community Book Club meetings are free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be served and participants are invited to bring a snack to share.

Lois Inman, Dyer Memorial librarian, and Jaime Johnson, Upper School English teacher, will lead the group. The current book selection is New York Times best seller Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J.D. Vance.

Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis—that of white working-class Americans. The decline of this group, a demographic of our country that has been slowly disintegrating over 40 years, has been reported on with growing frequency and alarm, but has never before been written about as searingly from the inside. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like when you were born with it hung around your neck.

Hillbilly Elegy is a deeply moving memoir with its share of humor and vividly colorful figures. This is the story of how upward mobility really feels and it is an urgent and troubling meditation on the loss of the American dream for a large segment of this country.

For more information, contact Jaime Johnson at jjohnson@hpa.edu.

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Seniors Sidney Vermeulen and Noa Walker are the recipients of the Hiatt College Scholarships for Community Service and Academic Creativity and Initiative. HPA parents Jerry and Mahilani Hiatt were on hand for the presentation at the Upper School assembly on February 27.

Vermeulen received the Community Service Award and a $1,000 scholarship for embodying the spirit of servant leadership. Vermeulen intentionally looks for ways to use her education to help her community. Whether it's working as a teaching assistant in Waimea Middle School's STEM program, teaching English to children in Vietnam, helping with reforestation initiatives on the slopes of Mauna Kea, or volunteering as a Teen Leader for the Kohala Watershed Partnership, Vermeulen humbly and joyfully shares her knowledge and time with others.

Walker received the Academic Creativity and Initiative Award and a $1,000 scholarship for his creative endeavors, which have included song writing, attempting to write a book in the month of November to participate in the National Novel Month Challenge, and creating a pilot episode for his own TV show—an ambitious project that has included creating a character list, choosing a cast of actors, and composing the theme song. Walker is daring, engaged, unique, intellectually courageous and inspires others in the classroom.

The Hiatt College Scholarships were established in 2004, when Jerry and Mahilani Kellett Hiatt established the Mahilani Kellett Hiatt Endowment Fund. The Service Award recognizes a student who has demonstrated the greatest contribution to community service, while the Academic Creativity and Initiative Award recognizes a student for scholarly work above and beyond the regular academic curriculum.

Award recipients are selected based on nominations from faculty members. These nominees then are reviewed by an independent school committee.

HPAʻs 24th Annual ʻUkulele Festival, Peace-Love-ʻUkulele: Make a Better Place for You and for Me, drew a full house on Saturday evening, March 4, at Gates Performing Arts Center. The show featured more than 150 students from HPA, Kealakehe Intermediate, and Parker Middle School performing under the direction of Dagan Bernstein and Georgia Polakova (HPA), Gloria Juan (Kealakehe), and Sara Jane Lilley (Parker). Highlights included all-group performances, including I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing, Over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World with hula, a Michael Jackson medley and more!

I soon learn that everyone comes together as one, and I am blown away by the unbridled joy and manic enthusiasm filling our high school gym.

We enter hand-in-hand, the junior class raising their spears and screaming a war cry; faces bursting with a passion that causes the paint on our cheeks to crack. This year's HPA Class Olympics theme is "Great Warriors" and we will are living up to the challenge.

"THIS IS SPARTA!!!" we scream.

When a basketball game that sends the crowd into a mania greater than that of any NBA game is paired with a traditional Hawaiian hula, our community is able to showcase what makes them unique.

By Sidney Vermeulen

It's 7:30 a.m. and I arrive on campus to begin my cram session. Procrastination happens even to the best of us, and this morning the senior class gathers to practice our Class Number event, in hopes that our formation would lead us to acing the test. In this case, winning our event.

Like any test taker, we anxiously wait on the hill for our turn to form our 2017 formation. When our class is called, we march down the hill. We ace part one, stumble a little on our second formation (a pair of crossed axes) and head up the hill relieved to be done, but nervous about what the judges think.

Olympics falls in the limbo between school and spring break, but by day two, it is apparent that we aren't fooling around. Whether furiously building arduino controlled cars in the energy lab, playing soccer on the main field, or challenging the other classes to a game of taboo, you can tell that here at HPA we take this seriously.

After a couple of campus events, we head to Hapuna beach and get right back to business. Tirelessly, members from each class compete in the ten events that take place at the beach including beach volleyball, sand sculpture, and swim run, all culminating in the biggest event of beach day: Tug-of-war.

By the end of the day I am thoroughly exhausted. Far from a relaxing day at the beach, day two of Olympics proved to be an all out battle between the classes challenging each individual's wit and strength.

By Anthony Beetum ʻ17:

"I have a flight that leaves at 7:55 p.m., I haven't slept in three days. I'm really sunburnt on my back, and I couldn't be more excited for the next four hours!" -Jackson Evans '17

There was more than an hour left before the first event of the day, circle sit, but the classes weren't wasting any time, practicing all morning up to the start of the event just to make sure everything was perfect

Meticulously coordinated, and perfectly synchronized, the circle sit might be misleading if you thought the rest of day wasn't filled with chaos and hectic fun. In fact, the second event of the day was bubble ball, where students were sent flying several feet with this twist on soccer.

The adrenaline only increased as the action shifted to the big screen, with everyone crowding around to watch Mario Kart. The classes all tried to coordinate themselves smoothly once again for wall building. Collaboration is paramount as team members build a wall while blindfolded. Only one teammate, who can see, but can't build, tries frantically to coordinate everything.

Next up was color tag: 40 kids, hands full of color powder, and every team starting off nearly identically in clean, white shirts. Everyone was ready to throw powder the second you got too close, leaving a blue, green, red, or yellow splatter pattern over your shirt and probably face, too, and by the end, everyone seemed to be marked with a distinct abstract painting.



All this chaos turned out to be filler, occupying the time before the big events of Olympics: the talent show and lip sync, which are so heavily rehearsed and coordinated that they stand in stark contrast from the mayhem of the rest of the day.

We started off with talent show, where all the classes showcase their skills via instruments, singing, dancing, and anything else the students want to share. Two performances that stood out were the Juniors' highly technical and simultaneously trippy glow stick dance, and the Seniors' final performance, which featured a stage full of well-rehearsed students. The Seniors won the talent show with their group dance. The talent show was followed by impressive lip sync performances performed by every class, ultimately won by the Juniors.

Olympics closed with the entire student body gathered around the Gates Performing Arts Center (GPAC) stage for a high-energy musical performance by an ensemble of teachers and students. Every class did well in Olympics, and no performance disappointed in the talent show or lip sync, but only one class could win. The seniors, class of 2017, were crowned victorious.

Just the Facts Please!

HPA captured first place in the "Best Factoid" category at PBS Hawaiʻiʻs 2017 HIKI NŌ Awards show on Saturday, March 11, at the GVS Transmedia Accelerator at Honua Studios in Kailua-Kona. The event, hosted by Leslie Wilcox, PBS Hawaiʻi president and chief executive officer, and Aaron Salā, PBS Hawaiʻi board member, from the PBS Hawaiʻi Studio on Oʻahu, was the first-ever live-streamed awards show happening simultaneously at award sites on Oʻahu, Maui, Kauaʻi, Kailua-Kona, and Hilo.

The Hawaiʻi Preparatory Academy factoid, which focused on the schoolʻs solar trees, was hosted by Dylan Ngango Dikobo ʻ17 and produced by Ari Bernstein's ʻ94 Digital Documentary class for HIKI NŌ, a statewide digital learning initiative and student news program. The school received a gold medal and a $1,000 gift card from B&H Photo to purchase equipment for HPAʻs media program.

Winning stories and highlights from this year's awards celebrations will be featured in a two-part 2017 HIKI NŌ Awards Show at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 23, and Thursday, March 30, on PBS Hawaiʻi.

PBS Hawaiʻi recognizes exceptional storytelling skills of middle and high school students throughout the state who participate in HIKI NŌ. The nominees were chosen from HIKI NŌ shows that aired during the 2015-2016 school year and the fall semester of the current school year.

For more information, visit http://pbshawaii.org/2017-hiki-no-awards/

The HPA Community Book Club will meet at 7 p.m. on Thursday, April 20, in the Ko Kākou Student Union, Upper Campus. Community Book Club meetings are free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be served and participants are invited to bring a snack to share.

Lois Inman, Dyer Memorial librarian, and Jaime Johnson, Upper School English teacher, will lead the group. The current book selection is The Forgetting Time by Sharon Guskin.

What would you do if your four-year-old son claimed he had lived another life and that he wants to go back to it? That he wants his other mother?

Guskinʻs "fearlessly provocative" debut novel explores the lengths we will go for our children. The Forgetting Time examines what we regret in the end of our lives and hope for in the beginning, and everything in between.

For more information, contact Jaime Johnson at jjohnson@hpa.edu.

The Forty-First Annual Hawaiʻi Preparatory Academy (HPA) Horse Show, featuring Jumping and Play Day events, will be held at 9 a.m. on Sunday, April 23, at the school's Upper Campus in Waimea. The event is free for spectators and open to the public.

Nancy Steinecke, USEq Dressage 'r' of Kamuela, will judge. Steinecke has been instructing and training in the equestrian venue for more than 40 years. She currently is a Licensed Dressage Judge with the United States Equestrian Federation, one of only three in the state of Hawaii.

Riders will compete in the following classes:

Play Day (All classes try to be grouped by ability.)

1. Leadline

2. Walk/Trot Pleasure (English or Western)

3. Walk/Trot Equitation (English or Western)

4. Pleasure (English or Western)

5. Equitation (English or Western)

6. Bucket Elimination (English or Western)

7. Ribbon Race (English or Western)

8. Balance and Hold Game (English or Western)

9. Drop Race

10. Ride and Lead (English or Western)

11. Bending Poles

12. Barrel Race

13. Cross Rails Equitation – Trot and/or Canter

14. Jumper Over Cross Rails

15. Hunter Hack 2ʻ3"

16. Jumper 2ʻ3" to 2ʻ6"

17. Equitation Over Fences – 2ʻ6" to 2ʻ9"

18. Hunter Hack 2'9"

19. Jumper 2ʻ9" to 3ʻ3"

Entry deadline is Monday, April 17. Entry fee is $8 per class, plus a $10 non-refundable office fee. Classes are subject to change due to entries and weather. Post entries are allowed. For more information or show registration, contact show manager Judy Folk at 808-885-4302 (email: jfolk@hawaiiantel.net).

HPA senior and swimming standout Taylor Doherty signed her National Letter of Intent on Wednesday, April 12, in the schoolʻs Castle Gym with her family, coaches, teachers, teammates, and friends in attendance.

Doherty will continue her swimming career this fall at the University of San Diego (NCAA Division I).

"This event is about Taylor's future, but it's her past that has given her this opportunity," said Mark Noetzel, HPA's dean of campus life and head coach for swimming/diving and the Academy Swim Club. Noetzel credited Doherty's leadership as a "huge reason for our current success as a team."

Thomas Yoo, a senior at HPA, has been named a National Merit Scholarship winner in the 62nd annual National Merit Scholarship Program. Dana Petteys, HPAʻs interim dean of academics, made the announcement.

Yoo won the National Merit Delphi Foundation Scholarship and is one of more than 1,000 distinguished high school seniors who have won corporate-sponsored National Merit Scholarship awards financed by about 200 corporations, company foundations, and other business organizations.

Delphi is a leading global supplier of electronics and technologies for automotive, commercial vehicles, and other market segments that operates major technical centers, manufacturing sites, and customer support facilities in 30 countries.

Yoo, the son of Sae Keun Yoo and Sun Won Moon of Seoul, Korea, is bilingual in Korean and English and an advanced student of Spanish. He is a dedicated member of the schoolʻs cross-country team and theater department and has had prominent roles in several productions during his high school career. He also is founder and president of the HPA Cultural Inquiries Club. Last summer, Yoo interned in the marketing department of Delphi in Seoul. He will attend the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania this fall.

Scholars were selected from students who advanced to the Finalist level in the National Merit Scholarship competition and met criteria of their scholarship sponsors. Corporate sponsors provide National Merit Scholarships for Finalists who are children of their employees, who are residents of communities the company serves, or who plan to pursue college majors or careers the sponsors wishes to encourage.

Most of these awards are renewable for up to four years of college undergraduate study and provide annual stipends that range from $500 to $10,000 per year. Some provide a single payment between $2,500 and $5,000. Recipients can use their awards at any regionally accredited U.S. college or university of their choice.

Funding for these National Merit Scholarships is provided by corporate organizations that represent nearly all sectors of American industry. Sponsors from the business community have underwritten awards offered in all 62 competitions, expending or committing more than $767 million to support the intellectual development of the nationʻs scholastically talented youth.

HPA and the Hawaiʻi Association of Independent Schools (HAIS) host "A Social & Emotional Learning Presentation About Roots of Empathy," by Mary Gordon, founder of Roots of Empathy, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. on Tuesday, May 16, at HPA's Gates Performing Arts Center (Upper Campus). The event is free and open to the public.

Roots of Empathy is an evidence-based classroom program that has shown significant effect in reducing levels of aggression and bullying among primary and elementary school children, while raising social/emotional competence and increasing empathy. Roots of Empathy's mission is to build caring, peaceful, and civil societies through the development of empathy in children and adults.

Gordon founded Roots of Empathy in 1996, and in 2005, she created Seeds of Empathy for early childhood settings. She is a social entrepreneur, educator, author, and child advocate, who has created innovative programs that are used internationally and on multiple continents, based on the power of empathy.

Gordon speaks internationally, and serves as consultant to governments, educational organizations, and public institutions, including The World Health Organization, the United Nations, and the Nelson Mandela Foundation, among others.

For more information, contact HAIS at ddolier@hais.us, or visit rootsofempathy.org.

Commencement ceremonies for HPA will be held starting at 10 a.m. on Friday, May 26, in Castle Gymnasium at the school's Upper Campus. The ceremony is open to the public.

One hundred six graduating seniors will take part in the program. Head of School Robert McKendry will preside. Lupe Diaz, Upper School math teacher, will deliver the commencement address.

For more information, call 808-881-4002.

Listen to our parents reflect on HPA Commencement

Students, families, teachers, and friends gathered at the Village Campus from on Monday afternoon, April 24, for the schoolʻs Hoʻike. The event featured the Lower and Middle Schoolsʻ art show in the Lynn Taylor Library and dining hall, and fifth and eighth grade capstone exhibitions in the multipurpose building and dining hall. Congratulations to all the participants and many thanks to the HPA ʻOhana Association for providing refreshments!

Here are highlights:

The Forty-First Annual HPA Horse Show and Play Day was held on April 23 at the HPA Upper Campus. Nancy Steinecke of Waimea, Hawaiʻi judged the event. Some classes were judged on the rider, so only the riderʻs name is listed. Other classes were judged on the rider, with only rider's name listed, while others were judged on the horse and rider, with both names listed. Many events were timed.

Results are listed below.

Class 1: Leadline

1. Buddy/Kian Nikkhoo 2. Fancy/Emilia Ednie 3. Ho'oka/Charly Clay

Class 2: Walt Trot Pleasure

1. Paris/Teddi Osburn 2. Red/Hi'ilei Gacayan 3. Ho'oaka/Malia Mitchell

4. Buddy/Kian Nikkhoo 5. Francesca/Maddie Davids 6. Po'ele/Savannah Matsui

Class 3: Walk Trot Equitation

1. Tess Savage/Caberet 2. Red/Hi'ilei Gacayan 3. Malia Mitchell/Ho'oaka, 4. Sacha Golubitslay/Nala 5. Maya Slaven/Guinan 6. Gina Bertaina/Otiz

Class 4: Open Pleasure

1. Francesca/Maddie Davids 2. Paris/Teddi Osburn 3. Red/Hi'ilei Gacayan 4. Sadie Hawkins/Kristina Novotna 5. Sista/Mako Yamamoto 6. Ichabod/June Kim

Class 5: Open Equitation

1. Tess Savage/Caberet 2. Sacha Golubitslay/Nala 3. Malia Mitchell/Ho'oaka 4. Kristina Novotna/Sadie Hawkins 5. Malia McKendry/Sydney 6. Maya Slaven/Guinan

Class 6: Bucket Elimination

1. Maya Slaven/Guinan 2. Malia Mitchell/Ho'oaka 3. Anela Stewart/London Fog 4. Jacob Handman/Keala 5. Gina Bertaina/Otiz 6. Savannah Matsui/Po'ele

Class 7: Ribbon Race

1. Hi'ilei Gacavan/Tami Gouveia 2. Malia Mitchell/Maya Slaven 3. Haley Johnson/Makayla Johnson 4. Samara Clark/Lea Delaney 5. Sadie Hobbeheydar/Tami Gouveia 6. Maddie Davids/Malia Mitchell

Class 8: Balance and Hold

1. Malia McKendry 2. Maya Slaven 3. Sadie Hobbeheydar 4. Zoey Quiocho 5. Anela Stewart 6. Caleb McKendry

Class 9: Drop Race

1. Hi'ilei Gacayan 2. Samara Clark 3. Makayla Johnson 4. Malia Mitchell 5. Mako Yamamoto 6. June Kim

Class 10: Ride and Lead

1. Malia McKendry/Sydney 2. Makayla Johnson/Ruby 3. Hi'ilei Gacayan/Red 4. Caleb McKendry/Fancy 5. Malia Mitchell/Ho'oaka 6. Maya Slaven/Guinan

Class 11: Pole Bending

1. Sydney/Malia McKendry 2. Guinan/Maya Slaven 3. Ho'oaka/Malia Mitchell 4. Sunny D/Genneyrose Gouveia 5. Hawai/Lea Delaney 6. Po'ele/Savannah Matsui

Class 12: Barrel Racing

1. Red/Hi'ilei Gacayan 2. Hawai/Lea Delaney 3. Sydney/Malia McKendry 4. Ruby/Haley Johnson 5. Po'ele/Savannah Matsui 6. Ichabod/June Kim

Class 13: Cross Rails Equitation

1. Kristina Novotna/Sadie Hawkins 2. Anela Stewart/London Fog 3. Malia Mitchell/Ho'oaka 4. Zoey Quiocho/Jinx 5. Malia McKendry/Sydney 6. Gina Bertaina/Otiz

Class 14: Jumpers Cross Rails

1. London Fog/Anela Stewart 2. Sacha Golubitslay/Nala 3. Maile Kuyper/Ichabod 4. Kristina Novotna/Sadie Hawkins 5. Zoey Quiocho 6. Tess Savage/Caberet

Class 15: Hunter Hack 2'3"

1. Gidget/Sylvia Ravaglia 2. Sadie Hawkins/Kristina Novotna 3. Sista/Mako Yamamoto 4. Ho'oaka/Malia Mitchell 5. Sydney/Malia McKendry 6. Guinan/Maya Slaven

Class 16: Jumper 2'3 – 2' 6"

1. Diamond in the Rough/Zoe Mercer 2. Ho'oaka/Kristina Novotna 3. Gidget/Sylvia Ravaglia 4. Caberet/Tess Savage

Class 17: Equitation over Fences 2'6" – 2'9"

1.Tess Savage/Caberet 2. Zoe Mercer/Diamond in the Rough

Class 18: Hunter Hack 2'9"

1.Gidget/Sylvia Ravaglia 2. Ho'oaka/ Kristina Novotna

Class 19: Jumper 2'9" – 3'3"

1. Diamond in the Rough/ Zoe Mercer 2. Ho'oaka/Kristina Novotna 3. Caberet/Tess Savage

Many students in HPA's Independent Science Research (ISR) are motivated strictly by the temptation of discovery, so they can't resist doing research in their future fields of study, but the story is a little different for HPA senior Tanner Riley. Tanner has already taken an opportunity to conduct research with his summer internship at a biological research center, but now he wants to focus his ISR on helping others through what he has learned from the experience.

Tanner recently was an intern at the Coastal Marine Biolab, working under professionals using advanced biology techniques to genetically engineer the DNA of fetal chickens. These exact lab methods, like gel electrophoresis and PCR, ended up being the focus of a few lab experiments in his AP Biology class this year, and his experience with those enabled him to help the biology students through the really technical parts of their labs.

Tanner now wants to turn his project into a service learning experience. Next semester he is going to visit HPA's middle school to teach middle school students the concepts of DNA, genes, phenotypes and the processes scientists use to study all of them. He will base the lesson around an example that students can experience easily in the classroom, tasting a chemical called PTC. Roughly half of given population will have the gene that enables them to taste this chemical, and Tanner wants to be able to sample a student's DNA and predict whether they can or not before giving them a sample to taste. This way he can teach his students about the concepts of Genes and DNA, and transition into their real world expressions through phenotypes and proteins.

Tanner one day wants to be a professor teaching neuroscience to college students. He notes that his project "works as a really good parallel" for what he wants to do in the future. Presenting such complicated techniques and ideas to a group of middle schoolers does present a challenge: there are so many of them. Right now he has been working only a few sample at a time, preparing each one is a lengthy process on its own, but soon he'll have to apply everything he's practicing know to a much larger scale, about 20-30 samples, one for each student.

The process preparing samples for PCR, amplifying the DNA, and running the DNA through electrophoresis, all of which are time consuming, technical, and present many points of possible failure. Preparing the DNA from a spit sample involves using isolating the DNA from the other proteins and chemicals around the DNA, and then isolating the exact gene we want from the rest of the DNA. Amplifying the DNA, or making copies of it, involves running the DNA through a thermocycler with the appropriate RNA primers and TAC polymerase.

By Anthony Beetum ʻ17: