By: Steven M. Boyle \u201906 and William Cracraft<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This article originally appeared in the winter 2011 Harker Quarterly<\/a> and was reprinted in Harker News Online.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Harker, like most schools, hosts visitors at athletic\nevents, student-run events like Junior States of America, performances of all\ntypes and debate and math invitationals. But as the school has matured,\nbringing people to the campus has taken on a new dimension.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A dozen years after the upper school came into being, Harker\nnow hosts a myriad of events each year in addition to its student events, which\nbring to its Silicon Valley campuses visitors not only drawn from Harker\nfamilies,\u2028but local and\nglobal intellectuals and art-seekers. The \u2028growth\nin visitors has been bolstered by a thriving academic environment across three\ncampuses and the addition of the auditorium in Nichols Hall, which provides an\nacoustically appropriate space for small gatherings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As the upper school found its groove, students began going\noff campus, representing Harker around the country, and, eventually, the globe.\nAdministrators knew the value of bringing the world to Harker, too, and the\ndoors were open to a variety of visitors from outside the Harker community of\nstudents, alumni, parents and relatives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Harker Invitational Debate Tournament, the first\nHarker-sponsored event to draw upper school students from other schools,\nstarted in 1999 and continues to this day. By its fifth year, the event drew\nteams from 20 schools from California, Oregon and Nevada. Another early event\nis the middle school\u2019s Harker Math Invitational, which started in 2001.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The upper school performing arts events have always drawn\ncrowds; in the fall of 2001, as the student body grew in size and maturity, the\nupper school play, \u201cA Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream,\u201d drew an estimated 1,000\naudience members, and the following May more than 1,300 attended \u201cOklahoma!\u201d\nThough audiences were no doubt mostly Harker community members, the shows have\nalways been open to the public, and there were plenty of seats for friends,\nneighbors, and Shakespeare and musical aficionados.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Through the early 2000s, plays, concerts and dance\nproductions involved more students, bringing more visitors to the campuses.\nAthletic events also grew in size and number as the upper school athletic\nprogram began to flower, and the debate tourney, now renamed the Howard and\nDiana Nichols Invitational Debate Tournament, and math invitational continued\nto draw middle school participants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2004, events took on a new dimension and Harker began to\nbring people to campus to strengthen the school\u2019s bonds with the greater\ncommunity, inform parents and expose students to ever more sophisticated\nevents. To that end, Harker joined Common Ground, a coalition of Bay Area\nschools working together to provide parent education to their communities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As a member school, Harker began hosting speakers and, for\nthe first time, parents from other schools began coming to campus regularly,\nother than for athletic events. In 2006, a Common Ground speaker at Harker drew\n231 parents; 153 were from other schools, a full two-thirds of the audience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2005, a wider variety of visitors started coming to\nHarker. The Junior State of America (JSA) club hosted a \u201cPizza and Politics\u201d\nevent to watch a presidential debate and more than 80 students and faculty,\nincluding JSA students from Independence High, San Jose High Academy and Monte\nVista, attended and participated in the debate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Capping off 2005, audiences\u2028were\ntreated to Harker\u2019s\u2028new\nperforming arts venue\u2028in\nthe middle school\u2019s\u2028\u201ccafetorium,\u201d renamed\nthe\u2028Blackford Theater by\nthe\u2028performing arts\ndepartment.\u2028The\nrefurbished space is the primary performance\u2028venue\nfor the school, with tons of parking, easy access through gates to the venue\nand a raised sound and light booth. Each year thousands attend events at the\nspace, and the temporary digs have served a valuable function in keeping the\nperforming arts department housed while funds are raised for the much-needed\nnew performing arts center on the Saratoga campus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In April 2006, a bright star, the Harker Research Symposium,\nappeared in the constellation of visitor-friendly events. Organized by Anita\nChetty, science department chair, and the WiSTEM student organization (Women in\nScience Technology, Electronics and Mathematics), the symposium features talks\nby Siemens\/Intel competitors and finalists; video conferences\u2028with Harker alumni at research\nlabs across the United States; and workshops on technical writing, research internships\nand research competitions. The event has grown year by year and Chetty has been\nextremely successful in drawing progressively more high- profile speakers, who\nin turn draw avid adult listeners to the event.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The 2011 symposium, themed \u201cA Call to Innovation,\u201d drew 500\nvisitors, a 50 percent increase over 2010, and there were standing- room only\naudiences for world class keynote speakers Scott McNealy, co-founder and former\nCEO and chairman of the board of Sun Microsystems (and a Harker parent), and\nMike Schroepfer, vice president of engineering at Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While science marched on, performing arts added new shows\nopen to the public. The first all-jazz concert was held early\u2028in 2007 and in 2010 groups from\nall three campuses were participating. Upper school plays drew packed houses\nfor their single-weekend performance runs and two musicals were selected to\ntravel to the prestigious Festival Fringe in Scotland in the summers of 2007\nand 2011.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In May 2007, ground was broken for a new science and technology\nbuilding, Nichols Hall, including an auditorium with 192 stepped seats, a\nperfect venue for medium-sized audiences for lectures, small concerts and\nmeetings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the other end of the campus, at the start of the 2007-08\nschool year, Davis Field opened. This emerald of a football field has it all,\nfrom a top notch\u2028artificial\nsurface to ensure year-round games, to lights and seating for more than 500\nspectators. Over this past summer seating was augmented, bringing the total\ncapacity to 780. Besides spectators, last year Davis Field shook to the tramp\nof the 250-person UCLA Bruin Marching Band, which has four former members on\nfaculty at Harker. The storied band borrowed Davis Field for practice before a\ngame with University of California, Berkeley, to the delight of students and\nfaculty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A month after Davis Field opened, the adjacent, spacious\nSingh Aquatic Center was christened, providing a great competitive venue with\nbleachers for swimming and water polo competitions. To round out the athletic\nfacilities, a new gym is planned on the same schedule as the performing arts\ncenter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In March of 2008, Harker added a new dimension to its\nactivities with the Harker Speaker Series (HSS), intended to bring leaders and\nvisionaries from a wide variety of fields to share their expertise or unique\nexperiences with both Harker and the greater community. Using the Nichols Hall\nauditorium, the gymnasium, or both, Harker has brought in nearly a dozen\nspeakers of national acclaim.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe addition of Nichols Hall \u2013 and the auditorium \u2013\nprovided the school with the perfect space to share even more with the K-12\ncommunity and the general public,\u201d said Pam Dickinson, director of the Office\nof Communication. \u201cWe\u2019ve always believed in fostering an inspiring and\nmotivating community, and the expanded space gave us new opportunities to do\nthat.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n From the start, HSS benefited from a serendipitous\nconnection. \u201cJohn Jerney helped us launch the HSS, and it was his brainchild,\u201d\nsaid Dickinson. Jerney, a writer and Harker parent (Cristina, grade 11; John\nNicolas,\u2028grade 8), brought\nthe first speaker, Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the Search for\nExtraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute in Mountain View, to Harker for\nthe series, and followed up with many other connections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n HSS speakers in 2011 include decorated \u201cEndeavour\u201d astronaut\nDr. Gregory Chamitoff, who spoke on achieving his lifelong dream of going into\nspace, and Dr. Jill Tarter, director of SETI\u2019s Center for SETI Research in\nMountain View.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In January 2011, ragtime pianist Bob Milne, hired by the\nLibrary of Congress to create reference recordings of famous ragtime works,\ncame to speak and perform as part of the HSS. His visit was the seed for the\nHarker Concert Series (HCS), which officially started two months later with a\nconcert by the MarcOlivia Duo, two well-traveled, Fulbright-winning violinists\nwho played stirring European folk songs. On December 2 of this year, Opera San\nJose performed, and the spring semester 2012 will see visits from the Gerald\nClayton Trio, pianist Adam Golka and Afiara String Quartet, all open to the\npublic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Two other \u2028important\nprograms\u2028bring educators\nfrom\u2028around the Bay Area\u2028and beyond to Harker. \u2028Each year in late\u2028 winter, Harker hosts \u2028the Silicon Valley \u2028Computer-Using\u2028 Educators conference \u2028on the upper school \u2028campus. More than\u2028 200 teachers and\nadministrators from all over Silicon Valley attended the conference in February\n2010. In addition, each summer for the last five years, Harker\u2019s technology department hosts teachers from around the Bay\nArea at the Harker Teacher Institute to hear speakers and attend workshops on\nclassroom technology and other topics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Harker librarians brought a stack of colleagues to Harker\nwhen they hosted a meeting of the Bay Area Independent School Librarians\n(BAISL) in 2010 on the Blackford campus. About 80 librarians, from Marin to\nMonterey, met in, of course, the library and in the multipurpose room.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another unique event brought dozens of young Broadway\nhopefuls to Harker when the Broadway revival of \u201cAnnie\u201d held its West Coast\nauditions at Blackford. For the full \u201cAnnie\u201d story see page 36.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This year brought another first \u2013 a TEDx conference at\nHarker. This was the first student-organized and promoted conference and it was\na resounding success, with speakers of world class caliber. For the full TEDx\nstory, see page 6.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The launching of the Harker Speaker Series and the Harker\nConcert Series, combined with a focused performing arts program, events like\nthe Harker Debate Invitational, the Harker Research\u2028Symposium and the\u2028Harker\nMath Invitational, have\u2028transformed\nHarker into a nexus for important\u2028ideas,\nevents and gatherings, drawing more visitors and community members in 2010-11\nthan ever before. The benefit is that through these events, Harker families\nmeet people who write, sing, play, travel in space, go to war zones, help the\npoor, develop new industries and entertain \u2013 truly illustrating Harker\u2019s\nmission to raise global citizens and engage our local community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Full reports on each of our events can be found at Harker\nNews Online. Visit the News & Events tab at www.harker.org for upcoming\nHarker Speaker Series and Harker Concert Series events.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By: Steven M. Boyle \u201906 and William Cracraft This article originally appeared in the winter 2011 Harker Quarterly and was reprinted in Harker News Online. Harker, like most schools, hosts visitors at athletic events, student-run events like Junior States of America, performances of all types […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[193],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education-and-schools"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fnsreporting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fnsreporting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fnsreporting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fnsreporting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fnsreporting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=983"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.fnsreporting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/983\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":984,"href":"https:\/\/www.fnsreporting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/983\/revisions\/984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fnsreporting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fnsreporting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fnsreporting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}