• The Duluth Middle School Academic A Team won the Georgia qualifier for the inaugural U.S. Academic Bowl tournament, defeating RiverTrail Middle School in the finals last month, when middle schools all over metro Atlanta competed at RiverTrail Middle in Johns Creek. Heather Godown coached the winning team of Gautam S. Desai (Captain) and Shalin Jain, David Savitskiy, Mann Sytha and Naman Shah. The team, along with teams from three other middle school teams across metro Atlanta, will compete in the U.S. Academic Bowl National Championship in Crystal City, Va., May 20-22.
• Nicolas Badila, a home-schooled high school junior from Jonseboro, has won $10,000 toward his college education as the runner-up in a nationwide contest sponsored by Sallie Mae, the college-loan company. The Make College Happen Challenge asked students to describe creatively how they plan to pay for college. Nicolas' autobiographical video featured video games he created including one President Barack Obama played at a White House Science Fair. Already pursuing an associate's degree at Gwinnett Technical College, Nicolas, 17, hopes to study computer science or business at Morehouse College.
• Alcova Elementary School and Summerour Middle School were named 2016 High-Flying Schools at the 27th Annual National Youth-At-Risk Conference. Only schools with at least 50 percent of students at or below the poverty level and with highly diverse student bodies are eligible for the award, which is based on academic success, community collaboration, citizenship development and democratic education. The conference hosted by Georgia Southern University's College of Education and Division of Continuing Education draws educators, counselors, social workers, criminal justice professionals and community leaders nationally and internationally.
• As part of the student-run small business, AWEAR, Woodward Academy sophomore Rachel Nelkin and her 14 peer business partners recently received Junior Achievement's top JA Fellows Company of the Year award. AWEAR, hosted by UPS, developed bracelets priced at $15 each to raise awareness for specific types of cancer and generated $4,671 in revenue. AWEAR will represent JA of Georgia at the National Student Leadership Summit in Washington, D.C., this summer, where student-run businesses from across the nation will participate in a trade fair and pitch their companies to a panel of business leaders.
• Tia McGill of Atlanta, a Ph.D. student at the School of Public Health at Georgia State University, has accepted a National Institutes of Health postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University. Her research there, in the Department of Global Health and Population at Harvard's T.H. Chan School of Public Health, will focus on examining culturally specific factors related to coping with violence exposure among adults who have seen war.
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