Officially kicking off the school year and the first day of classes, Convocation featured speeches from co-head monitors Emma Tung ’22 and Jack Burton ’22 urging students to take risks and care for one another.

Tung noted the excitement of celebrating Convocation in person after the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the past 18 months. She shared a story about facing her fear of heights and jumping into a lake from a 30-foot cliff, relating it to each grade in the Upper School: facing uncertainty like Class IV students, growing in confidence like Class III students, embracing new challenges like Class II students, and treasuring each moment like Class I students. 

With impressive accuracy, a group of Class I students were able to closely predict Japan’s total medal count in this summer’s Olympic Games.

Using what they learned about statistics and probability from Math Department faculty member Terri HerrNeckar, prior to the start of the games Christopher Scanlon ’22, Elliot Strauss ’22, and Ted Sunshine ’22 studied the “home-field advantage” for Olympic host nations to project how many medals Japan would win. Home-field advantage commonly refers to an athlete’s ability to outperform or win more often at their home facilities.

“We seized the opportunity to apply mathematics to a world event,” said Scanlon. “Given that Olympic city selection is announced no later than 11 years in advance, a host nation would have two Olympics to prepare for their eventual host games. We examined the last three Olympic host nations’ (China, Britain, and Brazil) performances in the two games leading up to events in their home countries. Referencing official Olympic data, we measured the average increase in selected athletic categories across each event. Together, this data allowed us to determine the approximate increase in a nation’s total medal count for their host Olympics.”

As a freshman, Teddy Ellis ‘22 enjoyed guest speakers who came to campus to speak to students on a variety of topics. Some of these speakers were alumni—Ellis wanted more opportunities for students to connect with them, but recognized it wasn’t always possible for alumni to get to campus. During the fall of 2019, under the guidance of faculty sponsors Jim Kernohan and Matt Fishbein, Ellis launched Stang Stories (https://www.stangstories.com/) a podcast featuring interviews with alumni who share their stories with the broader Milton community.

Stang Stories was then expanded to an official student club, so other students could participate in the production of the podcast. So far they have interviewed nine alumni: Jim Meeks ’97, Kenzie Bok ’07, Tad Hills ’81, Rev. Dr. Chloe Breyer ’87, Fred Melo ’84, Sid Raju ’12, Amy Kaufman ’04, Edward Cunningham ’94, and Farah Pandith ’86.

The Class of 2021 gathered under a tent on the Quad to celebrate their peers at the Prize Assembly. Awards recognized overall student achievement as well as achievement in the performing arts, visual arts, English, science, math, classics, computer science, modern languages, history, public speaking, student publications and athletics.

Students in the GAINS (Girls Advancing in STEM) Club recently welcomed Omayra Ortega ’96 for a virtual visit, during which Ortega discussed her work in statistics and mathematical epidemiology and what led to her career as a college math professor. 

Ortega’s route to applied mathematics and epidemiological research was “non-linear,” she told students. Now an assistant professor at Sonoma State College, where she teaches statistics, Ortega majored in math and music at Pomona College as an undergraduate. Abad experience in a general chemistry class made her rethink ideas about a pre-med track.

“I wasn’t focused on science, specifically,” she said. “I was a pure mathematician, I was interested in theory. Math was this complex, intricate game, and I wanted to play… Math is the most interesting subject in the whole world. It’s just puzzles all day.”

From sharing first-person testimony and creative work to advocating before legislators, students from Boston-area private and public schools spent Friday exploring how the humanities can influence action on issues of climate change and climate justice.

“We do not all suffer the same climate injustices,” read a Milton student from Melissa Figueroa’s Performing Literature class, which created a “found poem” curated from the words of Boston climate leaders and other community members. “We sacrifice aspirations to implement actions we know aren’t right, to the detriment of the state’s poorest and most vulnerable residents. We have let low income communities, communities of color, bear disproportionate burdens while excluding them from the decision-making process.”

The Humanities Workshop’s Youth Summit was a virtual event during which students from participating schools shared some of their work from the past year. The Humanities Workshop, co-founded and co-directed by Milton English teachers Alisa Braithwaite and Lisa Baker, is a consortium of educators and students from seven local schools who tackle major social issues through the lens of the humanities. The consortium schools are Academy of the Pacific Rim, Boston College High School, Boston Collegiate Charter School, Boston International Newcomers Academy, Boston Latin School, Milton Academy, and Phillips Academy Andover.

Some of Milton’s best student writers and artists gathered virtually on Monday evening for the Laurence S. Persky Memorial Awards. The annual awards are given for the best work appearing in Milton Academy student publications and honor excellence in creative writing, journalism, art, photography, and production.

Guest speaker and alumna Tina Nguyen ’07 spoke to students about writing and told stories about her “weird career path.” She is a national reporter for POLITICO, covering the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement, disinformation, and internet culture. Prior to that, she was a staff reporter for Vanity Fair Hive for more than four years, covering American politics and the rise of Donald Trump.

Nugyen said she tries to make her “writing as compelling as possible.” 

“Writing is the foundation—it’s an art but it’s also a discipline,” she said. “The goal is to make sure your audience gets what you are saying. They may not like what you have to say, but at least they understand it.”

From determining the presence of genetically modified organisms in snack foods to a field study on coastal processes in Jacksonville, Florida, this year’s advanced science final projects explored a wide range of research topics and experiments.

Students in advanced biology, chemistry, physics, and environmental sciences courses displayed their work on a new website, which includes videos, images, lab reports, and graphics. The website was in lieu of an in-person Science Symposium, the traditional event where advanced science students present their final projects.

“The symposium couldn’t happen this year for a number of reasons, so this was our plan B, and it turned out really nicely,” said biology teacher Michael Edgar. Restrictions on indoor gatherings due to COVID-19 and a number of advanced science students learning remotely made an alternate option necessary. Since some students did not have access to labs for the traditional design-your-own (DYO) experiment, teachers opened up a research project option.