Last week, Charlot Lucien visited Milton’s campus to lead French students through lessons and activities on Haitian culture and French Creole. Mr. Lucien is a well-known storyteller, poet and artist in Boston’s Haitian community and founded the Haitian Artists Assembly of Massachusetts. He has released four critically acclaimed storytelling CDs and his poems and commentaries have appeared in various publications. Mr. Lucien travels extensively throughout the U.S., Canada, France, Haiti and Guadeloupe as an educator and storyteller.

Dr. Ned Sahin, Milton Academy Class of 1994, a neuroscientist and technologist, is the graduation speaker for 2015. Ned’s neurotechnology firm, Brain Power, uses cutting edge brain research and technological advances to affect lives. Brain Power is transforming wearables, like Google Glass into assistive devices for children with autism.

At Williams College, Ned concentrated in biology and neuroscience. He earned a masters at MIT in the Brain and Cognitive Sciences Department. Ned completed his Ph.D. at Harvard in cognitive neuroscience, where he was awarded the Richard J. Herrnstein Prize for the year’s best Ph.D. dissertation. He continued his research as a post-doctoral fellow at University of California San Diego and the Salk Institute. His research has been published in Science and Nature Neuroscience.

By Ariela Buxbaum-Grice ’15

Milton’s fifth annual Science Symposium showcased advanced science students and their DYO (Design Your Own) experiments in the Pritzker Science Center. For students enrolled in advanced biology, chemistry, physics and environmental science, discussing independent projects that they’ve pursued over the last several weeks is their culminating work.

At the symposium, students presented posters and conducted demonstrations. For their DYO projects, students construct their own experiments based on, but not limited to, the material covered in class and their own personal interests in a specific area of study. The project is a long-term assignment, lasting for about a month, and is a chance for students to work independently of the curriculum without heavy guidance from a teacher. Most students perform their DYO with a partner, and the project requires time outside of class.

At the Bisbee Tea, Bisbee prize-winner Deanna Ferrante (II) answers questions from peers and faculty about her research paper, “It’s All Just Black and White: The Incarnation of the Ku Klux Klan.” The Bisbee Prize honors and celebrates outstanding student research in U. S. history. Each year, Milton faculty members teaching the U.S. History and U.S. History in the Modern World courses select honorees from among their students. Deanna is one of 13 prize-winners whose research ranged from the Dawes Act of 1887 through the Free Speech Movement.

Just like the Boston Marathon, the Charles River begins in the town of Hopkinton. It meanders 80 miles through 23 towns before it reaches the ocean in Boston Harbor. Bryan Dore, who was on campus as the Lorax Speaker for the Earth Day assembly, explained to students how the river went from one of the most polluted in the country to one of the cleanest. He is the director of the volunteer monthly monitoring program at the Charles River Watershed Association.

Mr. Dore’s team of 80 volunteers takes river samples from 35 locations once a month and uses that data to inform municipal, state, and federal agencies “the outcomes of the choices they are making” in regards to laws and policy. This year, the Environmental Protection Agency declared the Charles the cleanest urban river in the country and rated it an “A” on the annual report card. In 1995, the river received a “D-.”