Education notes: Dec. 8
Awards/honors
▪ Bourbon County Schools Director of Special Education, Shella Sams, was named The Outstanding Special Education Administrator of the Year at the annual Exceptional Children’s Conference recently. The honor is awarded to a school administrator whose primary responsibility is special education and for distinguished leadership and support for special education programs in Kentucky.
Sams has a Bachelor of Arts and Master of Science of Education from University of Kentucky. She is nationally certified as a school pychologist by the National Association of School Pychologists. She served as president of Kentucky Council of Administratiors of Special Education in 2013.
▪ Elena Castro, a senior in the Spanish Immersion Program at Bryan Station High School, has been selected for the College Board’s National Hispanic Recognition Program. Every year, the NHRP salutes about 5,000 of the 250,000 Hispanic/Latino students who take the PSAT/NMSQT. The NHRP is an academic honor that can be included on college applications. It’s not a scholarship, but colleges do use this program to identify academically exceptional Hispanic/Latino students.
▪ Two Fayette County students were runners-up in the 2015 Improbable Baubles design contest at the Headley-Whitney Museum, where this fall’s theme was mythology. Ryoma Iwasaki of Athens-Chilesburg Elementary placed second in the K-5 division with his entry “Inferno,” while Haiden Moore of Edythe J. Hayes was second with “Day of the Dragon” in the middle school group. Honorable mentions went to ACE’s Carlee Hawkins for “Squieer” (combination squirrel/deer); Hayes’ Olivia Poucel for “Pegasos”; Cardinal Valley Elementary’s Julie Torres for “Haunted Mansion”; and Veterans Park Elementary’s Presley Miller for “Princess Dog.”
Bibelots are small objects of curiosity, beauty or rarity. The late George Headley III, a jewelry designer, crafted bibelots using precious and semi-precious stones and metals. Today’s art students work in more ordinary media like rhinestones and spray paint to create faux bibelots.
Some 180 pieces are on display through Dec. 20 at the museum, 4435 Old Frankfort Pike. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Friday, and noon to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Admission is $10 for adults and $8 for seniors; ages 18 and younger are free. For questions, call (859) 255-6653.
▪ Several Sayre School students have been elected to statewide offices at the 2015 Kentucky Youth Assembly.
Spencer Stewart, class of 2017, became the first Sayre Upper School student in the school’s history to be elected governor of the Kentucky Youth Assembly. Missy Hill, class of 2019, was also elected to statewide office as premier president of the Senate.
More than 1,000 students attended this high school session of KYA from 38 schools around the Commonwealth. Sayre School’s 40-student delegation was recognized for excellence and received a number of individual awards and recognitions:
Outstanding Delegate: Anjali Shankar
Outstanding Speaker: Brian Craven
Outstanding Media Corps Representative: Clay Barnett
Premier Legislative Bill Team: Lora Stone, Sara Tahanasab and Karuna Lakhiani - Sponsored an act to limit hospital on-call hours for all physicians, surgeons, and hospitalists in Kentucky hospitals. Their bill passed both Senate and House chambers and was endorsed by the executive committee.
Outstanding Congressional bills: Sarah Leonardis and Will Kimmerer sponsored and passed federal laws: “To legalize a Death with Dignity bill in all states (physician-assisted suicide) in terminally ill patients, when all other options have been considered” and “To authorize additional permanent funding for the programs and activities of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.”
▪ Students from sixteen Fayette County public and private schools collected more than 138,000 aluminum cans for recycling during the Keep America Beautiful Recycle-Bowl competition this year. In total, 3,949 pounds of aluminum beverage cans were recycled.
Recycle-Bowl challenges schools to collect and recycle aluminum beverage cans from Oct. 19 through Nov. 15. The school collecting the most cans wins.
Locally, Central Kentucky Fiber, Keep Lexington Beautiful, and Lexington’s Divisions of Waste Management and Environmental Services contributed toward monetary prizes. Baker Iron and Metal paid schools by the pound for the cans they recycled.
The schools that collected and recycled the highest number of cans per student in their respective size category each received $750 in prize money. The remaining schools were eligible to win one of six $450 awards based on the number of cans collected per student.
The winning schools and the prizes they earned are:
$750 winners: Montessori Middle School, Sayre School, Cardinal Valley Elementary.
$450 winners: Christ the King School, Lexington Universal Academy, Montessori High School, Providence Montessori Middle, Wellington Elementary. The STEAM Academy and Mary Todd Elementary tied and will each receive $225.
Schools earning certificates: Ashland Elementary, Carter G. Woodson Academy, Leestown Middle, Meadowthorpe Elementary, Morton Middle and Rosa Parks Elementary.
▪ Once again, Centre College has been honored as one of the country’s top institutions for study abroad, with a No. 4 national ranking in the 2015 Institute of International Education report on study abroad participation rates for undergraduate colleges.
Centre has been in the top five of the IIE ranking all but one year over the last decade. In addition, the College has been ranked No. 1 in the nation twice over the last five years, in 2014 and 2012.
On average, 85 percent of Centre graduates study abroad once, 25 percent study twice and 5 percent study abroad three or more times.
Learn more about study abroad and global citizenship at Centre College at Centre.edu/about/study-abroad/.
Personnel
▪ Hal Boyd has been named special assistant to the president at Eastern Kentucky University.
Boyd is a 2016 Juris Doctor degree candidate at Yale Law School, where he has served as president of the campus chapter of the J. Reuben Clark Law Society since 2014 and focused his studies and research on legal and governance issues involving higher education. It was in that capacity that Boyd first met EKU President Michael Benson when Benson spoke at the Ivy League school in November 2014. The two went on to co-author an academic article examining the democratic ideals of higher education.
Boyd, 29, graduated magna cum laude with university honors in 2011 from Brigham Young University, where he studied philosophy and was involved in student government. He also attended the University of Cambridge’s 2008 Pembroke-King’s Programme and was a member of the Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi.
Before pursuing a law degree, Boyd wrote professionally for the Deseret News of Salt Lake City and for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, where he was special assistant for executive projects, senior associate of public affairs and executive secretary to the Church’s Public Affairs Committee. His writing has appeared in various scholarly and journalistic venues, including The Oxford Handbook series and BYU Studies Quarterly. He is also co-editor of “Psalms of Nauvoo,” a volume of 19th century religious poetry.
Boyd, who plans to pursue a career in higher education administration and law, has also worked as a research assistant for members of the Yale Law School faculty and as a summer associate in the Cleveland law office of Square Patton Boggs and the Detroit office of Honigman Miller Schwartz and Cohn.
Boyd, an Ohio native with ties to Massachusetts, is a direct descendant of famed Mayflower voyager and Plymouth Governor William Bradford and plans to become an active member of The Kentucky Society of Mayflower Descendants.
This story was originally published December 7, 2015 at 4:57 PM with the headline "Education notes: Dec. 8."