<bt>Jacob Hurwitz, a student at Robert Frost Middle School last year and Montgomery Blair High School this year, won the second place national award and a $10,000 scholarship in the 2006 Discovery Channel Young Scientist Challenge for middle school students.
Hurwitz won the second prize honor for his project "Disumbocoblated" (with partner Scott Yu, who also attended Frost and is at Blair this year) and for his excellent performance during the competition. Yu won the Discovery Health "Forensics Camp" award and was chosen by the finalists as the student speaker at the ceremony.
"Disumbocoblated," Hurwitz's and Yu's eighth grade science project, studied people's understanding of word permutations, examining demographic factors such as a subject's education, family history, and school attendance. They composed six paragraphs and wrote a computer program to scramble the letters in the paragraphs' words. Students at their school read the permutated paragraphs and answered five comprehension questions. Hurwitz and Yu found that intensive scrambling slowed the volunteers' reading and lowered their comprehension. Subjects who attended preschool or whose parents attended college performed best, and subjects with frequent school absences performed worst.
Paul Randazzo, a sophomore at Bullis School in Potomac, received an award from the F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Conference. A national award for professional writers, it also has a student component. Randazzo was second runner up in the 2006 High School Short Story Contest for Montgomery County high schools. The award ceremony was held on Saturday, Oct. 14 at Montgomery College. Randazzo was presented with a certificate of recognition and a check for $100 for his story titled "Altoids."
The Montgomery County Board of Education honored 13 individuals and organizations in the county during its 10th annual Awards for Distinguished Service to Public Education. The awards ceremony took place on Oct. 19 at 6 p.m. at Johns Hopkins University (Building 3), 9605 Medical Center Drive, in Rockville.
The winner of the Community Individual was Julie Bennett, a retired federal communications supervisor and high school English teacher, has volunteered at Seven Locks Elementary School in a variety of ways over the past six years. During the past year, she has donated one day each week to Seven Locks, typing lists, lessons and correspondence; duplicating and preparing instructional materials; and helping teachers check homework. She also works with individual students for remediation and enrichment.
Christine Elizabeth Mitchell, a graduate of Walt Whitman High School and daughter of Susan and Michael Mitchell of Potomac has become a member of the Franklin and Marshall College Chamber Singers.
Jonathan Parsons, son of Leslie and Ila Parsons of Potomac, has been selected to be part of the Lynchburg College Wind Symphony as an alto saxophone player. Parsons is a graduate of Winston Churchhill High School and a sophmore nursing major.