Education notebook: Mead junior earns congressional award

A Mead High School junior has been named among 10 students nationwide to receive the Congressional Award Gold Medal.

Lauren Champlin, a junior, has been invited to receive the award during a ceremony June 21 in Washington, D.C. The award recognizes initiative, service and accomplishments of young people.

The award requires 400 hours of voluntary service, 200 hours of physical activity, 200 hours of personal development and four nights and five days of expedition or exploration.

Champlin volunteered in running the Upward Basketball café, helping at summer STEM camps, teaching younger students how to use the Zero Engine computer program to create video games as well as assisting in other computer science classes, and worked to provide one-on-one attention for students at Whitworth day care. She also volunteered for some community events hosted by HUB Sports Center.

She is a member of the Mead robotics Club and computer programming clubs. She used Zero Engine to develop games used for demonstrations at the Mead School District’s STEM camps.

Freeman, CV students to receive National Merit Scholarships

Two Spokane County high school seniors are among about 3,500 winners of National Merit Scholarships financed by U.S. colleges and universities.

Nathan Longhurst of Freeman plans to attend Montana State and major in environmental engineering. Jason Vasquez of Central Valley will attend Brigham Young University, where he expects to major in physics.

Both were finalists in the 2018 National Merit Scholarship Program.

An additional group of Scholars will be announced in July, bringing the total number of college-sponsored Merit Scholarship recipients in the 2018 competition to about 4,000.

This year, 178 universities are underwriting Merit Scholarship awards through the National Merit Scholarship Program.

More than 1.6 million juniors in more than 22,000 high schools entered the program when they took the 2016 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test which served as an initial screen of program entrants.

St. George’s earns top state award for academics, athletics

St. George’s School has earned the WIAA Scholastic Cup as the top Class 2B school in academic and athletic performance.

The school scored 1,585 points – including earning four state academic titles in choir, debate, boys soccer and boys tennis – for having the highest GPA. Points were also earned from their top athletic teams, including the boys soccer, girls soccer, girls track and boys basketball teams that all finished second at state competitions.

The school passed Northwest Christian School’s score of 1,405 points that had kept NWC at the top of the ranking for the past two years. League rivals Colfax High School (865 points) and Davenport High School (830 points) finished third and fourth overall.

St. George’s has won the Scholastic Cup once before, taken second place seven times and ranked in the top 5 statewide 13 times. The private school was the only school this year to win the Scholastic Cup without winning an athletic state championship.