Students

Before sunrise Monday, Kevin and Shelley Taylor set out from their Millersville home to a new employment center for the Maryland Live! Casino, a slots parlor next to the Arundel Mills mall seeking workers for 1,500 jobs. Having tracked the progress of what will be the state's largest casino, the Taylors believe the facility could provide opportunity for their five-member family. Though Kevin Taylor has a job, he wants a better-paying one. And Shelley Taylor has been out of work for several months.

On the day before graduating from Howard Community College, Jennie Wang of Columbia considered the arduous road she had traveled and her studies at the Johns Hopkins University that lie ahead. One thought came to mind: "If my Hammond High School teachers could see me now ... " "If they [discover] I'm going to Johns Hopkins, they're going to be like, 'What? Jennie Wang? Really?' In high school, I was the worst student ever," said Wang, 22, who also became pregnant shortly after graduating from high school, leaving her estranged from her parents, who immigrated to the U.S. with her from China when she was 10. Determined to dispel stigmas attached to young single mothers, Wang excelled at HCC, eventually becoming student government president and vice president of Phi Theta Kappa, the national honor society for students at two-year colleges.

North County High School freshman Jack Andraka stood on the auditorium stage, speaking about the invention that earned him the $75,000 grand prize at the recent Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. Behind him stood Dr. Anirban Maitra, a professor in the Johns Hopkins University's department of pathology who gave Jack use of his lab to craft his invention, a cheap and effective "dipstick-sensor" method of testing blood or urine to identify early-stage pancreatic cancer and other diseases.

North County High School freshman Jack Andraka stood on the auditorium stage, speaking about the invention that earned him the $75,000 grand prize at the recent Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. Behind him stood Dr. Anirban Maitra, a professor in the Johns Hopkins University's department of pathology who gave Jack use of his lab to craft his invention, a cheap and effective "dipstick-sensor" method of testing blood or urine to identify early-stage pancreatic cancer and other diseases.

If all goes as planned, sometime this morning a spacecraft will blast off from its launchpad in Cape Canaveral, Fla., and ride a fiery plume of contrails upward through the pre-dawn darkness to begin a two-week journey to the International Space Station and back. But the flight won't be just another NASA resupply mission. Instead, the Falcon 9 rocket and its unmanned Dragon cargo capsule built by Space Exploration Technologies Corporation - SpaceX for short - will be the first commercially owned and operated vehicle ever to rendezvous with the station's orbiting astronauts.

Hundreds of people lined up on sun-drenched asphalt Saturday to see if they could get regular payouts, in the form of paychecks, from the new Maryland Live! Casino, a slots casino scheduled to open at Arundel Mills mall in about three months. "I hope I get lucky enough to get a position," said Mark Ellison, who's from West Baltimore. "They want people who are willing to go the extra mile so customers come in and enjoy spending their money. " The operators of what will be the state's largest casino hosted a job fair Saturday with the Anne Arundel Workforce Development Corp.

Students beware: Scholarship providers aren't just going by your application to learn about you. They're also checking you out on Google and social media sites, according to a recent survey. And what they uncover — the good or the bad — could be the tie-breaker when it comes to deciding between you and another candidate. "Students need to recognize that the colleges and scholarship providers are increasingly looking at this," says Mark Kantrowitz, the publisher of Fastweb.com, a scholarship site that conducted the survey.

The charge for many senior citizens classes will quadruple starting later this month, and instructors and students fear the higher fees will result in too few students to continue some courses.The classes, conducted at the Florence Bain Senior Center for county residentsover age 60, have been offered by Howard Community College at a $5 fee for nearly a decade. School officials blame state budget cuts for forcing them to hike the fee to $20 for the 20-hour courses.A group of students has submitted a petition to the school protesting the increased fees, and many students say they expect enrollmentto drop when the spring programs begin Jan. 22.Already, administrators have trimmed the spring course offerings to 16 from the usual 18 in anticipation of some reduced enrollment.

Graduation ceremonies symbolize a student's advancement to a new life stage. Wednesday, 240 Glenelg High School seniors will step forward and move ahead.Glenelg High School Principal Jim McGregor characterizes the class of 1995 as a group that displayed excellence in four significant areas. This group showed outstanding academic performance. The class boasts four National Merit Scholarship finalists and 11 commended National Merit Scholarship students, an exceptionally high number for a class and school of this size.

Linda Adamson doesn't mind that her fifth-graders play cards on the classroom floor.That's part of how they learn math.They also use a phrase -- "dirty monkeys smell bad" -- to help them with division problems and talk to a Guatemalan "Frizzle" drawn on the blackboard.This isn't your typical elementary curriculum, but it has won Mrs. Adamson, a former computer programmer and systems analyst, the Maryland Teacher of the Year Award for Anne Arundel County."When I got into teaching, it was the first time that I felt like I had a career," Mrs. Adamson said.

They have asked a date, found the perfect dress, matched the shoes and made the appointments for hair and nails. But the seniors and their parents at Maryvale Preparatory School must add one more thing to their to-do list before prom night Friday. The all-girls Catholic school in Brooklandville established an unusual pre-prom tradition 26 years ago, when it made an alcohol education program mandatory for students and parents. "Because of all the things going on related to drinking, including a horrific accident, we decided then that we had to do something," said Sister Shawn Marie Maguire, who has overseen the school since 1981.

Four Hereford High School students who attend Gunpowder Baptist Church in Freeland are collecting loose change to benefit a nonprofit group. Kelsey Anderson, Kendra Herbenar, Christie Ivey and Sandra Schenning are participating in a project called "Loose Change to Loosen Chains. " International Justice Mission, a human rights agency that hopes to combat modern day slavery, sponsors the project. The girls have placed collection cups in these Hereford locations: Hereford Pharmacy, 7-11, White Stone Cleaners and Mt. Carmel Pharmacy.

Seven students from the private GreenMount School in Charles Village will travel Tuesday to Knoxville, Tenn., to compete in an international problem-solving competition. The team – dubbed Soul Seven – participates in Destination Imagination, a program that presents challenges to students, from kindergarten through college, and judges their solutions on effectiveness and creativity. The competition has six categories: technical, scientific, fine arts, improvisational, structural and community service.

Zach Teal is just 17, but his love for books led him to write one of his own and to volunteer more than 250 hours at the Finksburg branch of the Carroll County Public Library. "Two hundred and fifty hours is quite unusual for our teen volunteers," said Heather Owings, who was volunteer coordinator at the library and now works at the North Carroll branch. Zach logged those hours over the course of three years, performing such tasks as making crafts for story times, signing in reading program participants, even wearing a mouse costume for a reading of "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.

A 19-year-old student from Baltimore Polytechnic High School told police he was beaten by two separate groups of juveniles from a rival school in downtown Baltimore on Thursday afternoon, an attack that comes amid a pitched debate over downtown safety. According to police, the student was walking in the 200 block of W. Fayette St., a block north of the First Mariner Arena, before 4:20 p.m. when he said he was attacked from behind by an unknown male. Nine other juveniles joined in as he tried to defend himself, and his phone was taken during the attack, he told police.  Moments later, police say, an MTA bus stopped in the block and a juvenile male wearing a Digital Harbor High School shirt "forced open the door and got off the bus," followed by 19 other juveniles wearing Digital Harbor shirts, who again assaulted the victim, police said.  Anthony Guglielmi, a city police spokesman, said the victim told the police he was attacked because of a rivalry between the two schools.

Fifteen-year-old Jack Andraka of Crownsville won the top prize at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair for designing a new method to detect pancreatic cancer, Intel announced Friday. The fair, held in Pittsburgh, is the world's largest high school science research competition. Jack will receive $75,000 for first place. Jack used diabetic test paper to create a dip-stick sensor to test blood or urine for early-stage pancreatic cancer. It was deemed 90 percent accurate, and is 28 times faster and cheaper and over 100 times more sensitive than tests used now. The senior has a patent pending.

Fifteen-year-old Jack Andraka of Crownsville won the top prize at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair for designing a new method to detect pancreatic cancer, Intel announced Friday. The fair, held in Pittsburgh, is the world's largest high school science research competition. Jack will receive $75,000 for first place. Jack used diabetic test paper to create a dip-stick sensor to test blood or urine for early-stage pancreatic cancer. It was deemed 90 percent accurate, and is 28 times faster and cheaper and over 100 times more sensitive than tests used now. The senior has a patent pending.

Young workers will have to scramble to land jobs — even unpaid ones — this summer, but the employment outlook for them is brighter than it was last year. "The economy generally is picking up," says Robert Trumble, a management professor at Virginia Commonwealth University. "If unemployment keeps inching down … it increases opportunities for teens in the summer. " Last summer was the worst for young job seekers since 1948, when the government began tracking the numbers.

Baltimore County schools spokesman Charles Herndon told The Sun there is no empirical evidence that class size is linked to student achievement ("Smaller Balto. Co. class sizes urged," May 150). But if that's true, then why did officials limit class sizes at the lowest-performing high schools, where smaller classes were deemed important for struggling students? The answer is that they, like everyone else other than maybe Mr. Herndon, recognize the simple truth that bigger classes make it harder for students to learn.

South River High School senior Caitlin Byrnes says her parents have been stressing the importance of college since she was young, and though she listened to the message, she didn't think it applied to her. The Crofton resident would consider the family hardships — her father struggling through a myriad of illnesses since his childhood, her mother never fulfilling her dreams of going to college because of a disability — and she didn't see how...