County Prep Students Participate in Junior Achievement Finance Park Program

On Monday, December 11, Monday, March 12 and Wednesday, March 14, over 275 County Prep students participated in a financial literacy program entitled “Finance Park” sponsored by Junior Achievement. County Prep students were privileged to vist Junior Achievement's brand new state-of-the-art facility located in Edison, NJ.  The students engaged in an intensive, high-energy immersion learning experience in which they received a fictional life situation and created a balanced monthly budget.  The activities reinforced NJ’s Core Curriculum Content Standards while focusing on important elements of money management and career exploration.  The event boosted the students’ confidence in making smart academic and economic decisions.  

County Prep Students Participate in Junior Achievement's High School Heroes Program

Ms. Bello and Ms. Torres teach classes at County Prep High School for aspiring young teachers.  Their students participated in Junior Achievement's High School Heroes Program and taught Financial Literacy classes to elementary school students at  Frank R. Conwell PS #3 in Jersey City on Friday, April 27th. The lesson plans focused on educational standards with grade appropriate themes of personal economics, business, work force readiness and the importance of staying in school.  This Structured Learning Experience helped students practice leadership, presentation, and communication skills as well as highlight the importance of team work and preparedness.  

County Prep sends a warm thank-up to Junior Achievement and the staff at  PS #3  for supporting our students.

High Tech Students Earn Medals for Their Performances on the National French Contest

(North Bergen, NJ—April 25, 2018) Students taking French at High Tech took part in the 83^rd Le Grand Concours (National French Contest), an annual national competition sponsored by the American Association of Teachers of French, announced Dr. Joseph Giammarella, Principal of High Tech High School.

Students of French (grades 1-12) from all across the United States and abroad take a test that evaluates their written, oral, and listening comprehension skills in French.  Teachers of French select certain students in their classes to take Le Grand Concours. 

More than 75,000 students competed in the the 83^rd Le Grand Concours.

Diana Concepcion of North Bergen earned Médaille d’or (Gold Medal).  The following students earned Médaille d’argent (Silver Medal): Mously Lo of Jersey City, North Bergen residents Erica De Lacerda and Janine Garcia, and Camille Streuly of West New York. Also, these students earned Médaille de bronze (Bronze Medal): Harrison resident James Espinosa, Laiba Khan of Jersey City, and Kearny resident Andrew Tran.

The following earned Certificate d’Honneur (Honorable Mention): Bayonne residents Kate Neal; Nathalie Mera and Charlie Rodriguez of Guttenberg; Hoboken residents Valerie Calligy, Mary O’Brien, Alexandra Monti, and Bar Yifrakh; Krystal Andrade, Juliana Branco, Sally Mangassa, and Fatou Mbaye, of Jersey City; North Bergen residents Sarah Bacha, Lissa Herrera, and Julissa Laignelet; and Lila Del Risco, Danna Guerrera, Jade Lorences, and Andrea Mejia of West New York.

High Tech Hiking Club Takes First Trek of the Year to Pyramid Mountain

(Montville, NJ—April 21, 2018) On a picture-perfect Saturday, students and staff from the High Tech Hiking Club embarked on their first trek of the year at Pyramid Mountain Natural Historic Area in Morris County, announced Dr. Joseph Giammarella, Principal of High Tech High School. 

Ronald Kliesh, High Tech social studies teacher and Hiking Club moderator, along with Shelly Witham and David Polito, veteran science teacher and social studies instructor, respectively, chaperoned the students, who enjoyed breathtaking glacial erratics, rock outcrops, wetlands, waterfalls, and scenic overlooks that include the Manhattan skyline.

“We’re all looking forward to more hikes and welcome any member of the High Tech High School staff to join us,” says Mr. Kliesh.

Tripod Rock, a 160-ton boulder resting on a trio of smaller boulders, and Bear Rock, one of the largest rocks in the Garden State, proved to be highlights of a hiking trip that encompassed Pyramid and Turkey Mountains in Kinnelon, Boonton, and Montville. 

Nearly 30 miles of marked trails provide opportunities for hikers to experience expansive views from flat-topped ridges.  The Visitors Center serves as a starting point for loop hikes, with more than a dozen trails in Pyramid Mountain and Turkey Mountain, ranging from 0.7 to 7.3 miles.  Several new trails include a 1.2-mile white-blazed trail, plus a black-dot trail and yellow-blazed trail, with a combined length of 2.8 miles.  The longer of these two runs from Powerville Road in Boonton Township to Bear Rock.

To watch video of the experience, go to the following:

https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://drive.google.com/a/hcstonline.org/file/d/1MZ8OppvZeDkq5aIf2hK28yKeRiKRmZrw/view?usp%3Ddrivesdk&source=gmail&ust=1524569545940000&usg=AFQjCNHCJJF52IYyZ-TAq9B78wOYNwbufw

High Tech Teacher Brian Mooney Speaks to DEMOCRACY NOW! about Kendrick Lamar Winning Pulitzer Prize

The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.

The following comes from a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: ”DNA” by Kendrick Lamar, from the Pulitzer Prize-winning album DAMN. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. We end today’s show with the announcement that shocked the world of music and hip-hop.

DANA CANEDY: And last, but certainly not least, for music, the prize is awarded to DAMN., by Kendrick Lamar, a virtuosic song collection unified by its vernacular authenticity and rhythmic dynamism that offers affecting vignettes capturing the complexity of modern African-American life.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Pulitzer administrator Dana Canedy announcing Monday that rapper Kendrick Lamar won the Pulitzer Prize in Music for the album DAMN., making this man from Compton, California, the first non-classical or jazz artist to receive the honor. Kendrick Lamar has topped the charts with music that tackles issues of race, politics, religion and even mental health. The Pulitzer follows the five Grammy Awards won by Lamar in January for DAMN., his fourth studio album. His previous album, To Pimp a Butterfly, also won five Grammys. Kendrick Lamar recently produced and curated the soundtrack for the Black Panther film to critical acclaim.

For more, we’re joined by hip-hop educator Brian Mooney. He’s a New Jersey high school teacher. After Kendrick Lamar learned Mooney was teaching the To Pimp a Butterfly album to his students in 2015, Kendrick visited Mooney’s class in New Jersey.

Welcome to Democracy Now! I’m sure the kids could care less.

BRIAN MOONEY: Yeah. Thanks for having me on, Amy. I appreciate it. Obviously, it was an incredible day that myself and my students will never forget. And, you know, I’m part of a collective of educators who use hip-hop in classrooms and educational spaces, called the HipHopEd movement. And, you know, we’re educators and researchers and professors and activists and community leaders who find ways to engage young people, urban youth, using all the elements of hip-hop culture, particularly rap music, but also other elements of hip-hop—knowledge of self and turntablism and graffiti art. So, we’ve been thinking about ways to be culturally relevant in classrooms and get young people excited about, you know, rap music, that they’re already invested in.

You know, so when I saw Kendrick Lamar release To Pimp a Butterfly in 2015, there were so many concepts and themes that were relevant to novels that I was already teaching, like Toni Morrison’s novel The Bluest Eye. So it was a perfect opportunity to just kind of like enhance the curriculum that I was already teaching. And my students responded really well.

AMY GOODMAN: I mean, of course, I was kidding when I said they could have cared less. Could you imagine Kendrick Lamar walking into the school? How did the kids act?

BRIAN MOONEY: Yeah. Well, what was incredible about it was that he was really a student that day, when he came in. You know, he was there to kind of really listen to our students perform their work. And he, like a good teacher, was just really leaning in, listening to what they were saying.

AMY GOODMAN: So what was your response yesterday when you heard that DAMN.had won the Pulitzer?

BRIAN MOONEY: Just thrilled and really just, you know, like humbled that my students and I were able to, you know, play a part and bring some awareness to other educators and teachers around the world that his work can be educational, and rap music and hip-hop culture can be used to teach and learn. So, you know, I thought it was a long time coming. It was well deserved. You know, while hip-hop, in many ways, has been very anti-institutional, it’s nice to get the institutional recognition that I feel like is very deserved.

AMY GOODMAN: The Pulitzer committee said DAMN. was, quote, “a virtuosic song collection unified by its vernacular authenticity and rhythmic dynamism that offers affecting vignettes capturing the complexity of modern African-American life.” So, talk about how he has changed the landscape.

BRIAN MOONEY: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: You also have now Beyoncé, what, first headlining Coachella—

BRIAN MOONEY: Yeah, yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: —the first black woman to headline Coachella. This is really late in time.

BRIAN MOONEY: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: You have Nina Simone getting inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, of course posthumously.

BRIAN MOONEY: Right, right, in the same year when Black Panther is breaking all kinds of records in the box office, too. So, it’s an incredible year, I think. But with Kendrick’s music in particular, you know, I feel like it’s part of a long lineage in hip-hop. And if you listen to that album, in particular, DAMN., the masterful storytelling and command of language, you know, it’s incredible.

You know, sometimes educators will think, “Well, how do you use hip-hop in a classroom, you know?” And you think about people like Shakespeare. Those people were incredibly versatile with what they did with language. You know, Chaucer, they were inventing words. They were inventing language. You know, they used the double negative. People don’t know that, right? So, when you think about emcees, modern-day emcees—right?—these are people with incredible linguistic versatility, like Kendrick Lamar.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to go to a video from NPR of Kendrick Lamar going to your tech—High Tech High School, where you teach in North Bergen, New Jersey. After visiting with your class, he performed at the school-wide assembly.

KENDRICK LAMAR: This album wasn’t made for—I didn’t think I made it for a 16-year-old, you know? So, when a 16-year-old is intrigued by it, it lets me know how so far advanced as a society we actually are, you know? And that inspired me on a whole 'nother level. I always get people like my parents or, you know, older adults saying, ’This is great. You know, you have a message. You have—you have themes. You have different genres of music.' But to get a kid actually telling me this, it’s a different type of feeling. I don’t think nobody in the world can belittle, you know, their humor, their smarts, nothing, because they’re highly intelligent. And walking into that classroom, it just proved me right.

AMY GOODMAN: Yes, there he was, at your high school, at High Tech High School in North Bergen, New Jersey. What was his reaction to coming to the school?

BRIAN MOONEY: One of the things that really made an impression on all of us was when he spoke to the whole student body. He said that this was the best accolade he ever received. And this was at the time when he just recently got the key to Los Angeles and he was deemed a generational icon. And he’s telling a whole student body of high school students, “This is the best accolade I could ever receive, is making an impact on young people.”

AMY GOODMAN: So, talk more about HipHopEd, Brian.

BRIAN MOONEY: Yeah, so, for any teachers out there, educators listening, you know, we have a Twitter chat on Tuesday nights from 9 to 10 p.m. with hashtag #HipHopEd. And we talk about the intersections of hip-hop, education, pop culture. We share resources, ideas, lesson plans. And we’re really, you know, just—it’s a professional development every Tuesday night and a resource for educators, who often can become very isolated in classrooms, you know, in the way that public school works. So, it’s an incredible resource.

And, you know, the HipHopEd movement is led by Dr. Chris Emdin from Teachers College, Columbia University, but also just teachers in classrooms doing the work every day. And they just released a book, a compilation, #HipHopEd, the first part in a compilation, and it’s incredible. There’s just amazing teachers and researchers out there, from Dr. Lauren Kelly at Rutgers to Mike Dando in the University of Wisconsin, to Dr. Edmund Adjapong at Seton Hall and Dr. Ian Levy at UMass—just incredible people who are doing great, great work. And that’s my team, the HipHopEd team. We’re just some brilliant, brilliant people who really care about kids and are trying to do good work in schools.

AMY GOODMAN: Your kids’ response yesterday when it was announced that Kendrick Lamar won the Pulitzer?

BRIAN MOONEY: You know, I haven’t really talked to them much about it yet, because I haven’t been in yet today. But when we—when I go in, you know, we’re going to talk about it and discuss it, because, you know, this is what we do. We talk about these recognitions and these accolades, that these are artists that they’re already listening to, they’re already invested in. So, when we, you know, do this kind of work in schools, it’s about being culturally responsive and culturally relevant.

AMY GOODMAN: Brian Mooney, New Jersey high school teacher. Kendrick Lamar went to his school in 2015, High Tech High School in North Bergen, New Jersey, to perform for the kids, as Brian Mooney participates in HipHopEd.

That does it for our broadcast. I’ll be speaking in Lincoln, Nebraska, on Friday night. That’s Friday night at the Rococo Theatre. Check our website for more details, democracynow.org.

High Tech High School Students Earn Eight Medals at SkillsUSA NJ Championships

(Bridgewater NJ—April 14, 2018) High Tech High School students earned a total of eight medals for demonstrating occupational and leadership qualities at the 2018 SkillsUSA New Jersey Championships, held in the Bridgewater-Raritan High School Gym, announced Dr. Joseph Giammarella, Principal of High Tech High School.

The following High Tech students earned the medals in their respective categories: Hoboken resident Gibson Borelli won a Gold Medal for Job Skill Demo (Culinary Arts); Makayla Blount of Jersey City and Secaucus resident Alana Aninipot won Gold Medals for Television (Video) Production; Alice Chen of Jersey City and Union City resident Sebastian Cruzado earned Bronze Medals for 3D Visualization; David Mansour of Bayonne and Hoboken resident Colm Donston also earned Bronze Medals for Television (Video) Production, as did Rebecca Rosas of West New York for Welding Sculpture.

“SkillsUSA was such an interesting learning experience,” says Borelli.  “It was so cool to see how hard everyone works for something they love to do.”

The awards ceremony honored winners for over 40 competitions held that day. The Gold Medal winners move on to the National Leadership and Skills Conference in Louisville, Kentucky, from June 25^th-29^th.

“I’d like to congratulate our winners and say how proud I am of all the participants involved in SkillsUSA,” says Dyanna Bruno, Instructor of Food-service Management and Marketing and co-adviser with Chef Jennifer Fargo.  “It’s amazing for Hudson County and High Tech to be recognized in such a prestigious competition, and I want to thank everyone involved.”

SkilllsUSA, a national partnership of students, leaders, and industry representatives, helps to ensure a skilled American workforce.  SkillsUSA serves high school and college students preparing for careers in technical, skilled, and service occupations.

“SkillsUSA was an amazing opportunity to observe the different styles of the same art from people all across the state,” Mansour adds.  “It was a lively and educational experience.” 

(from left to right: Alice Chen, Sebastian Cruzado, Alana Aninipot, Colm Donston, David Mansour, Rebecca Rosas, Gibson Borelli, and SkillsUSA co-adviser Dyanna Bruno)

HCST County Prep Culinary Arts Department & Teacher John Palsi Receive Charity Award

This Friday, April 20th, the Chandelier Charity Organization of the Year Award honors a community volunteer group that has actively supported the work of Hudson Milestones as well as the individuals within their programs. This year’s recipient is Hudson County Schools of Technology, Culinary Arts Department, led by John Palsi. Congratulations!

Four High Tech TV Production Students Earn Medals at SkillsUSA NJ Championships

(Bridgewater NJ—April 14, 2018) Four High Tech TV Production students earned medals in Video Production at the SkillsUSA New Jersey Championships, held in the Bridgewater-Raritan High School Gym, announced Dr. Joseph Giammarella, Principal of High Tech High School.

The TV Production students, David Mansour of Bayonne, Hoboken resident Colm Donston, Makayla Blount of Jersey City, and Secaucus resident Alana Aninipot, participated in the Television (Video) Production competition, whereby they wrote, filmed, and edited a 30 second advertisement for SkillsUSA aimed toward the 8th grade and freshman demographic. The students worked in pairs to create their SkillsUSA ad over the span of four hours.

The awards ceremony honored winners for over 40 competitions held that day.

Aninipot and Blount won the Gold in the Video Production competition.  Last year, they nabbed the Bronze Medal in the same competition.  Newcomers Donston and Mansour earned the Bronze as well this year in the very same competition.

“I’m glad that we had the chance to participate in SkillsUSA for the second year in a row,” says Aninipot.  “It was nice to compete against the best programs in the state and to come out on top.”

High Tech Has Record Princeton Acceptances in One School Year

(Bayonne, NJ—April 14, 2018) This year, five High Tech students have received acceptance into Princeton University, the most acceptances in one school year that High Tech has ever seen, announced Dr. Joseph Giammarella, Principal of High Tech High School.

The following students have received this distinguished honor: Bayonne siblings Anna and John Rezk; Muhammad Umar, also from Bayonne; Mously Lo of Jersey City; and North Bergen resident Erica De Lacerda.

High Tech’s Anna Rezk Offered Full Scholarships to Eight Ivy League Schools

(Bayonne, NJ—April 14, 2018) When Anna Rezk was just 13 years old, her family suffered a tragedy: the severe illness and death of her father. The teenager not only filled the family void of her father's death by helping to raise her two brothers, she also channeled her grief over her dad's fatal bout with pancreatic cancer into a determination to fight the disease. She wrote about the experience in a spectacularly successful college admissions essay.

"I think seeing him in the hospital atmosphere, seeing the strongest person I had ever known get smaller physically, it was a hard experience, it was really traumatizing on different levels," said Rezk, now an 18-year-old senior at High Tech High School in North Bergen. "But I think that, in itself, it kind of invoked this feeling in me that I had a responsibility to other people's dads, that if I had the ability to change the way that other people's lives could be affected, then I should take advantage of that.  "I'm kind of honoring my dad in that way."

Anna's father, Rezk Wanis Rezk, died at age 55.

The essay, along with other signs of Rezk's drive and intelligence that included stellar grades with a schedule of virtually all advanced placement and honors classes, helped win her a distinction unmatched in the memory of High Tech High guidance officials—she was accepted into all eight Ivy League colleges.  Moreover, every single one of them—Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Penn, Princeton and Yale—offered her a full scholarship.

Anna hasn't decided just where she'll enroll in September, though she is leaning toward Princeton University to stay relatively close to her mother, Mervat Andrawes, or Brown University in Providence, which offers an accelerated medical degree program.  And Anna didn't do a bad job helping raise her brothers: Peter, 20, now a sophomore at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh; while her twin and High Tech classmate, John, will attend Princeton, where he also received an offer of a full scholarship and will study engineering.

"I'm kind of the bossy one," she said, adding that her responsibilities included making sure her brothers had dinner. "So I would tell them what to do."

It was John, the more outgoing of the twins, who spread the word around school that his sister was in such high academic demand.  "I'm not bragging!" John said, beaming with pride at his sister's smarts during an interview in the office of Assistant Principal Allyson Krone. "I just wanted to let people know."

The school's longtime senior guidance counselor, Vincent Nardiello, said he could not recall a student ever having been accepted to all eight Ivies, as well as to the dozen "safety" schools where she also applied.  This is also a special year not only for Anna and John, but for High Tech, which had a total of five students accepted to Princeton among 272 graduating seniors, an unheard-of number for a single school, Nardiello said. The other three are Mousy Lo of Jersey City, Erica De Lacerda of North Bergen, and Muhammad Umar, another Class of '22 Ivy Leaguer from Bayonne.

High Tech High, which will move into a new building in September, is a career-oriented magnet school whose 1,121 students are drawn from all over Hudson County. Despite the traditional conception—or misconception—of technical schools, Krone said High Tech prides itself on its rigorous academics. Each student is enrolled in an academy, akin to a college major, which Krone and Nardiello said may give High Tech graduates an advantage over their counterparts.

Anna and her brothers were born in Brooklyn after their parents immigrated to the United States from Egypt. The family soon moved to Jersey City, where they joined the city's large Coptic Christian community. Their father, an armored car driver, moved the family to Bayonne when Anna and John were in 3rd grade, where their intellect was evident even then

"They were, like, automatic superstars," said Ghenwa Hassan, 17, of Bayonne, a friend of Anna's since elementary school, and a classmate at High Tech, who will be headed to the Rutgers Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy in September.  "They were the smartest kids in the class."

Hassan and others said Anna was not all academics. She was a normal teen with a social life, a social conscience, and likes away from school, including fiction writing, something Anna said she thought of pursuing before medicine.

While her father's death did influence her decision on just what it was she wanted to pursue, Anna said it was her dad and mom, who, though not college grads, had instilled a joy of learning and a strong work ethic in her.

"I guess I was always like that," said Anna, who laughs easily and takes herself less seriously than her studies.  "It's hard to predict whether I might have been a slacker if he hadn't passed away."

For more on this story, please go to https://youtu.be/RpizIB-fQpQ

Once More, High Tech NHS Raises Funds for Operation Beachhead

(North Bergen, NJ—March 16, 2018) As part of its commitment to service to the community, the National Honor Society (NHS) of High Tech High School honored servicemen and women, past and present, with a charitable contribution to Operation Beachhead, announced Dr. Joseph Giammarella, Principal of High Tech.

“We wanted to thank those family members, friends, former students, and colleagues of High Tech,” says Joan Marie Bellotti, Language Arts instructor and co-moderator of the High Tech National Honor Society, “in order to bring awareness to our community of the sacrifice of our men and women.” 

The High Tech NHS raised and donated $442 to Operation Beachhead.

Operation Beachhead offers veterans, troops, disabled individuals, and their families adaptive, recreational sports and social activities, including surfing, kayaking, and paddleboarding.

(from left to right: Alex Becerril, Alyssa Mojica, and Sumyya Tahch)

High Tech Holds Successful Toiletries Drive

(North Bergen, NJ—March 5, 2018) High Tech students and staff have collected over eleven cartons worth of toiletries from February 12^th to March 5^th of this year, all of which will benefit the Hoboken Shelter, announced Dr. Joseph Giammarella, Principal of High Tech High School.

(from left to right: Sumyya Tahch, Anna Rezk, Alyssa Mojica, and Eleanore Woodruff)

High Tech National Honor Society Holds Annual Book Swap

(North Bergen, NJ—February 6, 2018) The High Tech National Honor Society (NHS), moderated by veteran Language Arts teacher and Department Liaison Joan Marie Bellotti, recently sponsored its annual Book Swap, a popular five-hour event, held in the Resource Center of the North Hudson Center of Hudson County Schools of Technology, announced Dr. Joseph Giammarella, Principal of High Tech High School.

Students and staff brought gently used books, magazines, DVDs, CDs, and even VHS cassettes to swap for other such media.  Everyone had the opportunity for even swaps.

Held twice a year in the winter and spring, the NHS Book Swap proved to be a successful and enjoyable means to recycle used items.  This year, students, faculty, and staff donated over 300 items for swapping.  After all of the items had been swapped, students had the opportunity to partake of the remaining items.

Five High Tech Students Receive Medals at the Hudson County STEM Showcase Awards Ceremony

(Jersey City, NJ—March 28, 2018)  Andrew Tran of Kearny, North Bergen residents Jeel Shah and Tanushri Shah, and Smriti Sukesh Kumar and Mahek Virani of Secaucus, all High Tech students, earned awards for their research projects at the 60^th Annual Hudson County STEM Showcase Awards Ceremony, held at New Jersey City University, announced Dr. Joseph Giammarella, Principal of High Tech High School.

Tran earned the Gold Medal for “Conditioning of Mus musculus to Overcome Innate Behavior.” 

Jeel Shah and Tanushri Shah accepted Silver Medals for their project, “Continuation of Effect of Cellular Radiation on the Behavior of Apis mellifera,” which also earned them the Dr. Irving Shulman Medical Award.  Since their previous research concentrated on the negative effects of cellular radiation on honey bees, this year’s research focused on finding a viable solution supported by the experiment, namely, to integrate weak and strong hives—via brooding, honey production, and communication patterns—to create balance within the respective hives.

Last but not least, Kumar and Virani’s project, “Road Rage Reduction: Effects of Driving Experience When AMTAM is Utilized,” earned them Bronze Medals.  Their experiment consisted of testing an RGB LED Matrix board preprogrammed with phrases such as “Sorry,” “New Driver,” and “Emergency” to promote human to human communication and prevent driver aggression.  Their results support the conclusion that younger drivers benefited the most from the AMTAN, as their aggressive feelings had reduced by more than 50%.

Other High Tech student participants include Reika Hayashi of Bayonne, who presented her research project, “Experimentation of Pathogenic Bacterial Attachment on Soft Contact Lenses”; North Bergen resident Veeraj Shah, who offered his research project, “Determining the Optimal Fibrous Scaffold for the Formation of a Tissue-Engineered Blood Vessel with Endothelial Cells”; and Muhammad Umar of Bayonne, who presented his research project, “The Effect of Various Neurotransmitters on the Behavior of Mus musculus.”  

“I’m very proud of our students and program,” says Dr. Arun Srivastava, veteran High Tech instructor and Science Fair coordinator.  “We instructors teach [our students] that every idea is a good idea, but often, some ideas are difficult to implement.  Our students overcome difficulties to offer us their great ideas.”

Sponsored this year by Jersey City Medical Center RWJ Barnabas Health, the 2018 Hudson County STEM Showcase offered students the opportunity to present their projects at Liberty Science Center on March 12^th.  In the past 60 years, the Hudson County STEM Showcase has been the culmination of a long quest for young scientists to improve, progress, and widen the range of their scientific and communicative skills, whilst making new discoveries along each point along the journey.

(from left to right: Tanushri Shah, Jeel Shah, Smriti Sukesh Kumar, Mahek Virani ,and Dr. Arun Srivastava)