Students shine at Academic Symposium
The day of academic celebration showcased student research and projects.
Rabun Gap’s 2019 Academic Symposium was a celebration of student research and academic successes across disciplines. This annual event showcases the best work coming out of Rabun Gap’s Upper School classrooms and laboratories.
Projects were on display all day throughout the Upper School, Library, Student Commons and Student Center. General academic projects ranged from a replica of a historic ice machine, a beaver wetland study, a go-kart that was built in STEAM, and a graphic design exercise in creating and identifying fake news. Panel sessions were presented by students that covered a range of topics including global culture and health, data science, sports and civil rights, women’s rights and personal finance.
Rabun Gap’s Upper School has two year-long Humanities projects — Project Eagle for sophomores and the American Studies Thesis for juniors. For Project Eagle, students choose a historical figure and delve into primary sources to form a thesis and develop a research paper. Rabun Gap juniors analyze an event or topic and its effect on American History. Some projects were shown as video presentations through the use of QR codes on posters that had been hung throughout the bottom floor of the Upper School; after the QR codes were scanned on a smartphone, the video presentation would pop up on the user’s screen. Some students also created tri-boards for their projects.
A panel of community judges rated projects, panel sessions, and papers, and interviewed students during the Symposium.
Earning first place from the Humanities Panel for Project Eagle was Tsering Lama ‘21 for her project "Sylvia Plath” and Adora Adeyemi ‘20 for the American Studies Thesis with her project “The Trial of the Century: OJ Simpson.” In the General Academics category, Alex Mescher ‘21 earned first place for his research “Ice, Ice, Baby! Building a Historical Ice Machine.”
Award-winners were:
Project Eagle:
Project Eagle:
1st Place: Tsering Lama '21 — "Sylvia Plath"
2nd Place: Will Prim '21 — "Jerry Garcia"
American Thesis Project:
2nd Place: Will Prim '21 — "Jerry Garcia"
American Thesis Project:
1st Place: Adora Adeyemi '20 — “The Trial of the Century: OJ Simpson”
2nd Place: Niamh Dempsey '20 —“The Sounds of War”
2nd Place: Niamh Dempsey '20 —“The Sounds of War”
General Academic Projects:
1st Place: Alex Mescher ‘21 — “Ice, Ice, Baby! Building a Historical Ice Machine”
2nd Place: Jack Mauldin ‘19, Filip Vuksanovic ‘19 — “Beaver Wetlands: Their Impact of Water Quality and Biodiversity”
Honorable Mention: Galen Krugly ‘19, Sunshine Zhang ‘20, and Leo (Xinyu) Zhang ‘20 — “A study of demographic factors that impact student academic performance from a sample of student data from the U.S.”
Honorable Mention: Arman Saduakas ‘19 and Sarah Futral ‘20 — “A study of rap music preferences across various demographic groups at Rabun Gap.”
Honorable Mention: Bilan Aiden ‘21 — “Acid Rain Chemistry”
Honorable Mention: Will Adair ‘19, Tori Anderson ‘20, Alice Cheng ‘21, Tom Shelton ‘20, Ed You ‘20, Alex Mescher ‘21 — Lake Volume & Water Flow Project
Honorable Mention: Jason Zhang ‘19 — Go Kart
Honorable Mention: Ilana Nzizera ‘20, Trevonya Pinder ‘19, Bella Wheeler ‘19 & Jamie Gray ‘20 — “Global Health”
Honorable Mention: Ashlee Barwick ‘19 and Christina Hunter ‘21 — “Fake news: All about it, how to make it, how to spot it”
Click here to see more pictures.
Click here to see more pictures.
Rabun Gap-Nacoochee School
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Rabun Gap-Nacoochee School is a private, coeducational day and boarding school for grades Pre-K through 12. Centrally located between Atlanta, GA, Greenville, SC, and Asheville, NC, we prepare young people for college, career, and a lifetime of leadership and service.
