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2008 Junior Classical League's State Championship Submitted by: Ms. Terry Klein, Ms. Melody Hannegan, Ms. Angela Bergen and Ms. Connie Sobieralski The National Junior Classical League, established in 1936, is an organization for middle and high school students in classical courses. It is one of the largest academic youth organizations in the world. There are over 50,000 members in approximately 1,200 chapters, located in almost every state and in several foreign countries. Pennsylvania has 35 chapters consisting of 1,794 members. At the end of last school year, the North Allegheny Junior Classical League won their eleventh consecutive State Championship. The Latin 2 Quiz Bowl team won first place in the state and the Advanced Level Latin team placed second in the state. Special congratulations belong to Jason Chen who is now a 10^th grader. He received a trophy for being the top Academic Champion at the competition!
						Academic Champion Jason Chen First Place Andrew Adam Megan Doerzbacher Jenna Mulligan Sean Radermacher Second Place Michael Sinko David Tobias Albert Wang


2008 Letters About Literature Contest Submitted by: Ms. Sharon Kroll Now in its 25^th year, Letters About Literature is a reading and writing promotion program of the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress, presented in partnership with Target Stores. We learned last May that a Marshall Elementary School fourth grader, Haley Lindberg, was chosen as a state finalist in the 2008 Letters About Literature contest. Haley was one of only 50 people among 976 contestants who have received this acknowledgement, which places her in the top 5% in Pennsylvania. Her letter was selected by a national screening committee and judged by the Pennsylvania Center for the Book’s screening committee. State Finalist Haley Lindberg

2008 National Spanish Exam Submitted by: Ms. Rose Mantella and Mr. Domenico DiBacco North Allegheny had 81 students place among the top in the nation on the 2008 National Spanish Exams. The American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese sponsor the National Spanish Examinations that are given each spring. The exams are designed to be very challenging and are conducted entirely in Spanish. Each spring, more than 89,000 students across the country participate in the online version of the exam. North Allegheny has been participating in this exam for seven years. The following NA students took this exam and earned Gold and Silver Medals. A Gold Medal certificate is earned by scoring at or above the 95^th percentile. A Silver Medal certificate is earned by scoring from the 85^th through the 94^th percentiles.

Level 1
Gold Medal Rose Devine Aarohee Fulay Margaret Haughney Anusha Nagabandi Rona Sun						Silver Medal Akshaya Arjunan Jeffrey Daye Rebecca Fritsch Sydney Micucci Erin Norwig Samantha Sartori Brittany Wilson


Level 2
Gold Medal Alexandra Bursic Sophia Ciocca Daniel Coombs Leah Dutton Lauren Gabriel Tyler Hall Julie Henderson Nicole Kurtanich Aarthi Ramesh Matthew Randall Rebecca Scherder Carrie Vereide Hannah Webber Bonnie Yan Liyang Yu Marco Zenz Kyle Zhu						Silver Medal Leslie Barksdale Katrina Baumann Christina Boada Ryan Brady Jonathan Du Merel Duursma Katherine Edwards Samuel Ewell Isaac Frank Joseph Helbling Keith Hoover Hyunyoung Kim Maria Munsch Eliana Rabinowitz Mark Silvester Robert Sittig


Level 3
Gold Medal Arundhati Bharati Stacey Chen Melissa Dias-Mandoly Douglas Healy Michael Heckmann Lauryn Lepere Kevin Liu Katherine Luo Dana Preston Kenneth Sandala Alyssa Shaw Rachel Simeone Angela Sipes Alaina Strickler						Silver Medal Derrick Alvarez Bahar Ataai Michael Baldonieri Sea Dong Andrew Ho Shawn Malik Madison Micucci Ian Preston Sarah Samuels Christopher Trapuzzano

2008 National Geographic Bee In April, Joey Zou – who was then an eighth grader at Carson Middle School – won the 2008 Pennsylvania Geographic Bee, sponsored by the National Geographic Society. In the 2007-2008 school year, Geographic Bees were held in schools with fourth- through eighth-grade students throughout the state to determine each school’s Geographic Bee winner. School-level winners then took a qualifying test, which they submitted to the National Geographic Society.
In each of the 50 states, as well as the District of Columbia, the National Geographic Society invited the students with the top 100 scores to compete at the state level. As the Pennsylvania winner, Joey received a $100 monetary prize, a globe and an expense-paid trip to Washington, D.C., where he represented Pennsylvania in the national finals at the National Geographic Society headquarters. Pennsylvania Winner Joey Zou
2008 Pennsylvania Governor's Schools of Excellence The Pennsylvania Governor's Schools of Excellence are sponsored by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Department of Education. They are a comprehensive set of residential summer programs held on college campuses. They focus on developing the talents of artistically and/or academically talented students. Admission to these programs is highly competitive. This year, 3,736 applicants vied for 788 positions in Governor’s Schools. North Allegheny had seven high school students selected to participate in the 2008 Pennsylvania Governor’s Schools of Excellence. They are: Selected to Participate April Cummins – International Studies Brett Freithaler – Arts-Music Katherine Luo – Science Madison Micucci – Arts-Theater Nimish Telang – Science Albert Wang – Information, Society & Technology Kerri Woodward – Science


2008 Spring Knowledge Master Open Submitted by: Ms. Janet Serdy While wrapping up their freshman year at NAI, a team of students placed 2^nd in Pennsylvania at the 2008 Knowledge Master Open Spring Competition. Knowledge Master Open competitions are held twice a year and are sponsored by the GOAL department. This was the 50^th annual KMO. There are 200 challenging questions in this competition that require higher-level thinking skills and cover fourteen curricular areas. . A total of 22,203 students representing 1,572 schools participated from 49 states, Belgium, Cambodia, China, France, Hong Kong, Indonesia, South Korea, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates. The NAI team consisted of the following students: Second Place in Pennsylvania Konstantin Borisov Jason Chen Steven Cunningham Marina Fang Richard Gayler Adam Majewski Anusha Nagabandi Nicole Olson Benjamin Peters Rona Sun


24th Annual Chemathon Submitted by: Mr. Mark Anticole Another team of NAI students – sophomores at the time – competed and won First Place, Level I, at the 24^th Annual Chemathon hosted by the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Maryland in College Park. The Chemathon is an annual multi-state chemistry competition for high school chemistry students that first took place in 1985. The competition is organized by high school chemistry teachers and chemists. The goal of the Chemathon is to provide an opportunity for students to use knowledge and skills gained in the classroom and to have a good time doing so. The events are planned to engage students of varying levels of ability in activities that are enjoyable and rewarding and to provide research opportunities to creative and inventive students. First Place Andrew Adam Stephen Guo Bonnie Yan Liyang Yu Qichu Yuan Qishu Yuan

74th Annual State Meeting of the Pennsylvania Junior Academy of Science Submitted by: Ms. Anne Marklewicz The Pennsylvania Junior Academy of Science is a statewide organization of junior and senior high school students designed to stimulate and promote interest in science among its members through the development of research projects and investigations. The North Allegheny Science Research Team won over $25,000 in cash and scholarships last school year. In May, team members made their final research project presentations during the 74^th Annual State Meeting of the Pennsylvania Junior Academy of Science, where they received six First Place awards and one Second Place award.
						Zappa Junior Award Richard Gayler First Place Award, Perfect Score Richard Gayler Julie Wu First Place Award Skanda Koppula Jay Sehgal Jonathan Lin Second Place Award Katherine Luo
*High School Writer Senior High Edition* Submitted by: Ms. Patricia Kramer Writer Publications produces three national newspapers; the Elementary School Writer, the Junior High School Writer, and the Senior High School Writer. Since 1984, these newspapers have been providing a real audience for student writers and in doing so, takes student writing to the final stage of the publishing process. The High School Writer is published six times during the school year. Each year they receive more than 30,000 compositions, stories and poems from students in all parts of the nation. The editorial staff sorts through those manuscripts and about 3,000 or 10% of the submissions make their way into print. Two of our high school students have been published in two different issues of the High School Writer. They are: Published Erin Cassetori Eric Harbison



Johns Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth Talent Search 2007 In 1972, Dr. Julian Stanley at the Johns Hopkins University developed the first talent search designed to identify, challenge, and reward academically-able young people. Known as the Center for Talented Youth, the program has expanded over the years to include academic opportunities, research, information dissemination, and consultation with educational organizations, and public policy initiatives. Annually, the Johns Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth Talent Search identifies students with exceptional mathematical and/or verbal reasoning abilities. Students in grades 7 and 8 who have scored at or above the 97% on Nationally Standardized Aptitude or Achievement Tests are invited to take the SAT I as an above-grade-level test. This past school year, thirty-six 7^thand 8^th graders from North Allegheny received a score of “Distinction” in the Johns Hopkins University Talent Search. The score of “Distinction” is awarded to those students who score equal to or above the score of the average college-bound senior on the SAT.

Score of Distinction
Brecken Blackburn Maxwell Blechman Shawn Brannon Nathan Christie Joseph Eisner Suyash Fulay Geneva Gausman Connor Goodman Niklaus Hamilton Leqi Huang Sai Karwande Jess Keeley				Noel Kim Skanda Koppula Evan Lee Cathy Li Erik Liu Martin Majewski Richard McCoy Jeremy Miller Ria Mulherkar Michael Murphy Connor Phillips Bonnie Pierson				Anjali Premkumar Piyusha Sane Nicholas Sullivan Kristina Taynor Sravya Vishnubhatla Anjie Wang Melik Yuksel Dennis Zhang Lily Zhang Linda Zheng Katherine Zhou Kevin Zhu



2008 National School Public Relations Association Since 1935, the National School Public Relations Association has been providing school communication training and services to school leaders throughout the United States, Canada, and the U.S. Dependent Schools worldwide. The association is a professional membership organization that produces communication products, maintains resource and research files, and has contacts and resources within the corporate and non-profit communication industry. There are about 32 chapters of the organization throughout the country that provide local networking opportunities for members. NSPRA offers a number of professional development opportunities, one of which is an annual national conference. Ms. Joy Ed was invited to present a session at the 2008 conference which was held this past July. Her session titled “Become a Master Juggler…” focused on how public relations professionals dealing with multiple projects, events, media, audiences and messages could be effective in their goals. Her session was well attended and received such positive feedback that she has been invited to submit a proposal to present another session at the 2009 national conference. Conference Presenter Ms. Joy Ed
Management Science Associates The Management Science Associates Sports Cup is a challenge to determine the best sports program for the WPIAL in each of the four classifications which are based on enrollment numbers. Points are earned for the success of each team sport in the fall, winter and spring seasons that have at least 25% participation of WPIAL schools included. The 2007-2008 school year was the fifth year for the Sports Cup Challenge. For the fifth consecutive year the North Allegheny School District Athletic Department won the Sports Cup Quad A Championship for having the best overall athletic program in the Western Pennsylvania Quad A classification. Sports Cup Quad A Championship Mr. Bob Bozzuto

National Council of Teachers of English The National Council of Teachers of English, with 50,000 individual and institutional members worldwide, is dedicated to improving the teaching and learning of English and the language arts at all levels of education. Each year one teacher in each state is recognized for demonstrating a capacity for professional leadership. Award recipients receive funding to attend the NCTE annual convention where each state level winner is honored at a special affiliate event. Mr. Zach Hull, now a second year teacher at Marshall and Carson Middle Schools, won the 2008 National Council of Teachers of English Leadership Development Award for Pennsylvania and has been invited to attend the National Convention in November. Pennsylvania Leadership Development Award Mr. Zach Hull