• March 21, 2019

    Ninth graders advance to state media and design competition

    Sophie Chen, Shana Reddy, Phoebe Chen A team of Upper St. Clair High School freshmen placed first in the Web Page Design category of the 2019 Pittsburgh Regional PA Media and Design Competition on March 20, 2019, at the Senator John Heinz History Center. The team – comprised of Phoebe Chen, Sophie Chen and Shana Reddy – now advances to the state-level competition on May 21 at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa.

    The team developed a website, Drop of Life (https://drop-of-life.netlify.com/index.html), from scratch that provides information about the causes, effects and solutions for the clean water crisis in both developing and developed countries around the world.  

    “Many groups in this category used a website builder or template, but this team went above and beyond to create a completely customized website,” Bethany Mittelman, gifted education teacher, said.

    Three other Upper St. Clair entries earned awards for their projects and presentations.

    Ninth grader Nikhil Shetty earned second place honors in the high school Graphic Design and Logo category for his minimalistic logo and media campaign that incorporated poster, T-shirt, rack card and social media designs.

    Shiven Verma, a seventh grader from Fort Couch Middle School, placed third in the middle school Programming category with his Machine Learning Driven Security program that can detect and identify images.

    Seventh graders Autumn Ma and Reese Roeschenthaler finished third in the middle school Web Page Design category for their Easy Recipes website that features original and family recipes that are easy, healthy and affordable.

    The Upper St. Clair students received guidance and support from gifted education teacher Miss Mittelman, Jason O’Roark, and Pat Palazzolo.

    “The students have been working for over three months to brainstorm, build, revise and present their ideas. They gained experience writing professionally about their process and final product,” Miss Mittelman said. “On the bus ride back to school, the students were already beginning to plan their projects for next year.”

    While the judges were evaluating, the students had the opportunity to explore the museum’s many exhibits including From Slavery to Freedom, Visible Storage, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, Heinz, Eyes of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh: A Tradition of Innovation, and the Western Pennsylvania Sports Museum.