Principal's Blog: Jesuit Students Shine

Principal's Blog: Jesuit Students Shine

As we head to the end of the 2018-19 school year, we want to take time to recognize the many Jesuit High scientists, mathematicians, writers, and artists who have represented our school in exemplary fashion this spring:

In mid-March, we learned that two JHS artists, Abigail Rawlinson and Amelie Stoddard, had won national medals in the Scholastic Art and Writing competition. In early June, Amelie's photo, Rever Au Musee (below right), will be displayed at the Pratt Museum. Amelie and art teacher Sascha Manning will attend the awards ceremony at Carnegie Hall in NYC on June 5-7. Abigail's art, "Sisters," is pictured below left. Congratulations, Abigail and Amelie!


On March 25, Sofia Deatherage, Adikus Schmahl-Waggoner and Marielle LeFave earned invitations to the Northwest Undergraduate Conference on Literature at Seattle U, where Marielle's essay on Walt Whitman's poetry and American democracy won the award for best high school entry! Sofia reports that they enjoyed fielding questions about their papers and visiting the conference's "rare book petting zoo"!

JHS Robotics won the Safety Award (considered one of the biggies!) at the Lake Oswego FIRST Robotics competition on March 30.

JHS Ethics Bowl team won the National Competition on April 6, 2019 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Team members are Ria Debnath, Jenny Duan, Lauren Haines, Jack Jensen and Shawna Muckle. This is the Ethics Bowl team's third state title, and first national championship. What an honor!

Showcasers at Oregon Thespian Festival: These students "won State" in their event, and were invited to perform before 1000+ of their fellow thespians. On May 15, they performed for their friends at a brownbag at JHS. Bravo to these superb thespians!

  • Johnnes Kromminga & Kenzie Gross--Duo Acting
  • Catherine Myerson & Andrew Decker--Duet Musical
  • Xavier Warner--Solo Musical

Showcase Finalists -- recognized and received a ribbon:

  • Sam Majors--Solo Musical
  • Sophia Takla--Solo Acting

Jesuit's legendary drama directors were also honored by their peers:

  • Elaine Kloser received the Melba Day Sparks Memorial Award, Oregon's Theatre Educators' Hall of Fame Award for Career Achievement.
  • Jeff Hall was honored for his eight years of service as the Oregon Chapter Director (his fellow high school directors gave Jeff a standing ovation).

In musical news, Henry Broughton and Ethan Tseng both qualified for the State Solo/Ensemble Band competition on April 27, and Ethan won the District Solo competition! The Band program's final concert on May 16 was a smash.

The JHS Choir will perform its final concert of the year to mark the end of new Director Kristen Caldwell's first year at Jesuit on Wednesday, May 22 in the Moyer Theatre at 7 pm. Be there!

JHS Battle of the Books team made the "Final Four" (ie, semifinals) in the Oregon Battle of the Books competition on April 6, 2019. Team members were Grace Nguyen, Mayurika Bhaskar, Emma Renn, Jahnavi Handral and Steele Clevenger.

Also on April 6, the JHS Science Olympiad team took second place in State at OSU. The team captains were Soumik Chakraborty and Dominic Debettencourt and the moderator was JHS math teacher Rob Skokan.

Oregon State Science Fair (NWSE) on April 12 at PSU.

  • Dev Udata: 1st place in Environmental & Earth Sciences
  • Rupert Li: 2nd place in Environmental & Earth Sciences
  • Mithra Karamchedu: 3rd place in Environmental & Earth Sciences

Junior Rupert Li and sophomore Brian Xu were recently recognized as two of the top math students in the US, qualifying for the USAMO (United States of America Mathematical Olympiad). Rupert and Brian are two of six total qualifiers from the State of Oregon.

On April 2, Rupert Li and Wenjun Hou took the USA Physics Olympiad exam. On May 7, 2019, we learned that Wenjun won a gold medal, placing him in the top 40 in the nation, and Rupert won a silver, meaning he is in the top 80 in the whole US. We are so proud of these young scientists!

More on Wenjun and Rupert:

On May 20, Wenjun traveled to New Brunswick, Canada to present a project at the International Symposium of Multivalued Logic (ISMVL). Wenjun wrote his paper on machine learning algorithms (think Artificial Intelligence!) See here for more: http://www.mvl.jpn.org/ISMVL2019/

On May 18-19, Rupert gave a presentation at MIT on his project, Compatible Recurrent Identities of the Sandpile Group and Maximal Stable Configurations.

  • Rupert was one of 16 students accepted into MIT's PRIMES-USA program, after answering a problem set containing 13 questions including topics from calculus, linear algebra, number theory, group theory, and enumerative combinatorics.
  • The Research Science Institute (RSI) is a six-week long science camp at MIT over the summer. Rupert was also one of 51 high school students nationwide accepted this year.

Congratulations to all of these hard-working scholars, artists, and scientists, who are such fine ambassadors for Jesuit High School!

Paul J. Hogan
Principal
503-291-5417

phogan@jesuitportland.org

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