Polk County Public Schools
Two Polk County students were part of Team Florida that finished in fifth place at the National Tournament of Excellence, the equivalent of the national academic championship. Six-member teams representing 20 states competed from June 14 to 16 in Lake Buena Vista testing their knowledge in mathematics, science, language arts, social studies, foreign languages, technology, fine arts and humanities.
Alejandro Garcia, a Lakeland resident and 2009 graduate of Harrison School of the Arts and Tyler Konkol-Bennett, a Lake Wales resident and 2009 graduate of Bartow High helped Florida to its top five place in the standings. Team Kentucky won the national championship.
Garcia and Konkol-Bennett were chosen to represent Florida at the national academic championship based on their performance at the state academic tournament held in April.
A Web site designed by two Polk County students received an “Outstanding Florida Entry” award and won a medal at the National History Fair held June 14 to 18 at the University of Maryland, College Park.
The Web site is titled “Waging Peace: The Legacy of General George C. Marshall” and was designed by Robert Lockard and Carmen Moore, students at Bartow’s Summerlin Academy. Lockard, a Lakeland resident, will be a sophomore at Summerlin in 2009-2010. Moore, a Winter Haven resident, will be a senior at Summerlin in 2009-2010. Lockard represented the pair and displayed the Web site at the national fair.
Annika Mulaney, a student at Lakeland’s Lawton Chiles Middle, also participated at the National History Fair. She displayed her Web site titled “ Marie Curie: Her Vision for the Future.” Mulaney, a Lakeland resident, will be a seventh grader at Lawton Chiles in 2009-2010.
The students’ Web sites qualified for the nationals by winning awards at the local and state history fairs.
Pranali and Prachiti Dalvi, sisters and students at Bartow International Baccalaureate, won awards for their science projects at the Intel International Science And Engineering Fair held last month in Reno, Nevada. The Intel fair is considered one of the premiere science competitions in the world for high school students. Approximately 1,500 students from 50 countries competed. The sisters reside in Lakeland and will be seniors in 2009-2010 in the Bartow IB program.
Prachiti’s project in the medicine and health competiton earned her a $50,000 scholarship offer from the Florida Institute of Technology if she decides to enroll there for college. Her project was titled “Localization and Quantification of Ataxin-1 in Normal Cell Lines and Alzheimer’s-Mutated Cell Lines and an Evaluation of Nicotine-and-THC-induced Microglial Activation.”
Pranali’s biochemistry project won a third place award of $1,000 at the Intel fair. Her project’s title was “Characterization of a Biophysics Model to Evaluate Regulation of the p53 Protein.”
