High School East junior Jonathan Chung, part of the ThINK Discovery science research program, was selected as one of 10 honorable mentions for his essay in this year’s DNA essay contest, sponsored by the American Society of Human Genetics.

Genome Wide Association Studies are used to associate genetic variations to certain diseases, and a lack of diverse participation can affect the pool of information available to scientists. Problems with a diverse data pool was the topic of this year’s contest.

Students from 40 U.S. states and 30 countries submitted essays. “It was a lot of work, but I can see that writing many drafts with lots of red marks contributes to a better quality paper,” Chung said.

Scientific writing requires an enormous amount of research, according to Maria Zeitlin, ThINK research coordinator at High School East. “Often the topics are ones the students have never heard about and so the writing begins with hours of literature review followed by writing a minimum of four drafts,” she said. “The result of all that hard work was Jonathan’s essay was very well articulated and analytical of the problems with genomic association studies.”

DECA recently hosted its annual International Career Development Conference virtually for more than 17,000 international students. High School East DECA students Lilly Chai and Samantha Micozzi ranked in the top 20 in the world in their respective events.

Their road to ICDC started in September by preparing for their respective competitions. The Suffolk County virtual regional competition was hosted in January, where the students qualified to compete at the New York State virtual conference held later that month. Based on their performances at the state competition of more than 2,000 students, Lilly and Samantha were among 18 students from High School East and High School West who competed at ICDC.

Lilly competed in the quick serve restaurant management where she took an exam and was given two roleplay scenarios with 10 minutes to solve a problem presented to her. Samantha participated in the professional selling competition, creating a company that could adapt to a virtual environment.

High School West students are creating their own glass mosaics during their craft II art classes in April. After creating their original designs, the students learned how to score and break glass. They glued down the pieces and then learned how to grout the tiles. The finished decorative piece is a stained glass mosaic in dozens of unique designs.

In conjunction with Earth Day, fifth grade students at Mt. Pleasant Elementary School recently learned about New York-based muralist Matthew Willey and his commitment to paint 50,000 bees around the world. Willey set a goal to raise awareness about the challenges bees face and how important they are to the world. Bees are responsible for pollinating 90% of the earth’s plants, including the fruits and vegetables. During their art classes, the fifth grade student-artists drew honeycombs and realistic bees in Willey’s style.

High School West’s virtual enterprise class participated in a virtual tradeshow on April 20 and 21 with more than 250 other international virtual enterprise classes.

Created in 2016, TruBlu Technology sells a variety of practical Bluetooth, app-based products that meet the needs of the tech community. Teacher Phil Como leads the students as they journey into creating a fictitious company from top to bottom.

Each student has a role in the organization, from chief executive officer to chief marketing officer. Students are interviewed and hired into their respective executive positions by members of the Smithtown IAB. There’s a technology team, an accounting department, human resources and public relations.

Students have the opportunity to earn six college credits through SUNY Farmingdale during this simulated business experience. The students are responsible for their bank account, inventory, printed materials and are even paid their salary from the TruBlu bank account.

During the virtual tradeshow, students acted as moderators, greeting online buyers and placing them into breakout rooms with members of the sales team. Another group of students acted as buyers for the other online companies participating in the tradeshow.

Seventh graders at Nesaquake Middle School participated in a walk to raise awareness about the water crisis in South Sudan during the first two weeks in April.

The seventh graders recently read the novel “A Long Walk to Water.” The main character Nya is one of the many girls in South Sudan who walks from morning to night gathering water from ponds and lakes to bring back to their families. Most times, the water is muddy and filled with contaminants. 

The book inspired students to help raise money for Water for South Sudan, which builds wells in villages so the girls can go to school instead of walking for water every day and helps eliminate diseases from drinking contaminated water as well. The students walked a mile, raising more than $1,700.