Maryland Community Newspapers Online
Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School in Beltsville held its annual science fair on Feb. 12. All students participated and the judges selected overall winners as well as winners in several sub-categories.
The grand winners went to Phillip Kirk and Raquel Shortt. Danielle Gibbs, Nicholas Ey, Benjamin Brown and Lenora Henry were all also selected to attend the countywide competition.
The first-place winner in the biochemistry category was Lauren Pettyjohn-Robin. The first-place winner in the Botany Category was Angella Lee, the second-place winner was Janae Seegers and the third-place winner was Benedicta Gomes. Yao Koudjodi and Antonio Sierra both earned honorable mention.
In the Chemistry Category, Lindsay Galloway and Shortt won first place. Second place went to Brown and Lauren Thomas. Third place went to Katie Ruiz and Bukola Akintayo. Vanessa Debra, Dennis Kim, Bailey Marshall and Mauro Ramirez all got honorable mention.
In the earth and space sciences competition, first place went to Michelle Anderson and Sean Stringer received honorable mention.
In engineering, Henry won the first place prize and Ey won second place.
For the environmental sciences competition, Gibbs won first place, second place went to Monique Anderson, third place went to Aengus McCoy and honorable mention went to Rebecca Gurwah and Kayla Whetzel.
Kirk won first place in the physics competition, Elvina Karley won second and honorable mention went to Isaiah Sampson and Colleen Danielson.
High Point grad helps inauguration run smoothly
High Point High School Alumnus and Air National Guard Senior Master Sgt. Tia M. Harris and Air National Guard Lt. Col. Delmena G. Burno were two of 7,000 U.S. Army and Air National Guard members to participate in President Obama's inauguration on Jan. 20. The 7,000 was the largest amount of service members ever used for an inauguration.
Guardsmen and women worked with military dogs, worked on consequence management planning, ceremonial, logistics and medical support preparation as part of the Armed Forces Inaugural Committee.
National Guard members assisted Washington, D.C., police and Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission police with crowd management, traffic control and emergency services operations.
The Armed Forces Inaugural Committee is established by the Secretary of Defense to help local law enforcement handle the inauguration.
Harris is a human resource advisor and a member of the 113th Wing at Andrews Air Force Base in Camp Springs. She has served with the National Guard for 19 years.
Harris graduated from High Point in Beltsville in 1989 and received a bachelor's degree in 1995 from Bowie State University. She later returned to BSU to earn her masters in 2000.
Burno, a Beltsville native, is a certified physician assistant who has been in the guard for more than 10 years. He is a member of the 113th Medical Group based out of AAF.
Burno graduated in 1974 from McKinley Technical High School in Washington, D.C. He then went on to receive a master's degree in 2002 from the University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha.
University Park Elementary eggs on good behavior
University Park Elementary School has announced its Eagle Egg Award winners for the month of January. Every month, one class from each grade level is awarded for the Eagle Egg Award for good behavior.
Eagle Eggs are given out to individual students by teachers and the class whose students collect the most eggs are deemed the winner for that month.
The winning classes are all presented with an Eagle Egg statue for their classrooms.
For December the Pre-K winner is Vicki Guardado's class with 48 eagle eggs. The Kindergarten winner is Drena Galarza's class, who collected 42 eagle eggs. The first grade winner, Allison Volski's class, earned 43 eagle eggs. Meredith Redina's class won the second grade award with 39 eagle eggs earned. Autumn Campers class was the third grade winner. They totaled 67 eagle eggs in January. The fourth grade winner was Kitty Moore's class with 43 eagle eggs. In fifth grade, Wally Young's class won with 59 eagle eggs. There was a tie in sixth grade between Dawna Phillips' class and Heather Bidjou's class. Each class collected 43 eagle eggs.
In total, 832 eagle eggs were given to students school-wide in the month of January.
O'Malley fills vacancies
at UM board of regents
Gov. Martin O'Malley nominated four new members to the University of Maryland System's Board of Regents on Feb. 20. The Board of Regents is a 17-member committee which oversees the 13 UM campus' policies and budgets.
Gary Attman, the FutureCare Health and Management Corporation president, was O'Malley's first appointment.
Attman graduated from UM in 1976.
John Young, a doctor at Shady Grove Adventist Hospital, and Linda Gooden, an executive vice president at Lockheed Martin Informational Systems and Global Services, were also named to the board.
Gooden will be the second Lockheed Martin executive on the board along with Norman Augustine, who formerly served as the company's CEO.
Young received degrees from UM and UM Medical School, and is also a member of the advisory board to the UM Life Sciences College.
Towson University junior and Student Government Association member, Sarah Elfreth was also appointed as the board's only student member.
She replaces University of Maryland, Baltimore County student Joshua Michael. All of the regents' terms are five years.
UM making waves
in cyberspace
The University of Maryland's Web site – www.umd.edu - was ranked No. 19 in the world and No. 9 among Web sites of public universities by a public research firm in Spain called the Cybermetrics Lab. The Cybermetrics Lab ranks the Web sites of the top 4,000 colleges and universities out of approximately 15,000 institutions around the world.
They publish the rankings two times a year.
The top 51 sites were all schools located within the U.S. with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Web site in the top spot.
The rankings were based on the number of pages recovered from search engines Google, Yahoo, Live Search and Exalead, visibility and the number of papers and citations for each academic domain.