Freshmen Charlotte “Charlie” Cassatto and Wynne Franciscovich are headed to the National History Day Long Island regional finals on March 26 after finishing in first place at Huntington High School for their group exhibit project titled “Planned Parenthood Healthcare for All: A Frontier in Sex Education.
The 2023 National History Day theme is “Frontiers in History: People, Places, Ideas.” The Huntington research partners worked for several months on their project.
“My National History Day partner, Charlie Cassatto and I have learned so much throughout this experience and hope to learn more as we continue through to the next round,” Franciscovich said.
The two carry A averages academically. They have known each other since kindergarten at Washington Primary School.
“Wynne and I knew right away that we wanted to revolve our project around women’s rights,” Cassatto said. “It’s something we’ve both been passionate about growing up. We immensely enjoyed educating ourselves and others on the topic. We’re both extremely grateful that we get to move on and expose even more people to our topic.”
The state championship is set for April 24 at SUNY College at Oneonta. The national finals will be held June 11-15 at the University of Maryland at College Park.
Whitman Merit Finalists
Walt Whitman High School seniors Ned Hunter and Anthony Maida have been named finalists in the 2023 Competition for National Merit Scholarship Awards.
The National Merit Scholarship Program is an academic competition for recognition and scholarships that began in 1955. Each year, high school students enter the program by taking the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT®). All finalists are considered for National Merit Scholarship Awards to be offered in 2023.
Hunter and Anthony are two of approximately 16,000 high school seniors that qualified as semifinalists in the fall.
For more information about the National Merit Scholarship® Program, visit:
https://www.nationalmerit.org/
Harborfields Merit Finalists
Harborfields High School seniors Daniel Panettieri, Darien Schultz and Maxmillian Stratton have advanced to finalist status in the 2023 National Merit Scholarship Program. All three Harborfields students will be competing within a field of 15,000 finalists for 7,250 National Merit Scholarships worth nearly $28 million.
Top Students at Half Hollow Hills
Half Hollow Hills has named the top 10 students at its two high schools. They are:
Half Hollow Hills West
Ryan Dang – Valedictorian
Emily Pallan – Salutatorian
Michael Bisulca
Viti Chandra
Tyler Cooper
Matthew Dunninger
Cheryl Famulare
Rebecca Felber
Sophia Guanti
Dylan Hall
Stephen Jones
Sydney Levinton
Victoria Madu
Nicole Pelliccione
Laiba Rajput
Benjamin Rogowsky
Connor Schad
Alyssa Spano
Ava Su
Arissa Zheng
Half Hollow Hills East
Jacob Leshnower – Valedictorian
Alice Wang – Salutatorian
Rebecca Adam
Ipek Basturk
Samir Batheja
Colin Campbell
Victoria Czoch
Vanessa Hsieh
Shaheer Khan
Della Lin
Lily London
James McKeown
Heidi Nelson
Manav Patel
Ryan Rudes
Harley Semon
Mark Shapiro
Zachariah Shin
Tyler Wenczl
Jason Wu
Harborfields Publication Recognized
Harborfields High School’s annual “Zephyr” student publication, led by Editor in
Chief Emma Byrom and “Zephyr” club adviser Eugenia Ritter, was recently ranked as Excellent by the National Council of Teachers of English in the 2022 Recognizing Excellence in Art and Literary Magazines contest.
The REALM program encourages schools to develop literary magazines that celebrate the art and craft of writing. This year, schools in 42 states and five countries nominated 262 student magazines from middle school, high school and higher education.
Cold Spring Harbor Students Win Research Awards
Three Cold Spring Harbor High School science research students have been selected as recipients of the 2023 sixth annual Mini-Research Grant award from the New York Institute of Technology.
Chosen were sophomores Milan Lustig and Ryan Smith and junior Lucas
Wolf. The NYIT Grant Review committee determined their submission to have scientific merit and potential impact in the STEM fields, including health.
The students’ research project, “SMAAC – Simplistic Manipulative Accelerated
Airfoil Control,” focused on the SMAAC system which allows for control of a drone’s rotors through the rapid acceleration of a shaft. This is simpler than the traditional approach, the swashplate, and is much easier to implement on drone scales. The system also adds a bevel gear in the upper assembly which would allow it to maintain control in high acceleration scenarios, such as takeoff and landing. This would allow drones to be lighter, more efficient and simpler without any major decreases in battery life or lifting capacity.