2010 P.S.E. Top Scorers accepted into regional SPISE Program
Siian Rancharan
SPISE, the Caribbean Science Foundation’s Student Program for Innovation in Science and Engineering is a prestigious program offered at the Cave Hill Campus of the University of the West Indies in Barbados. The program provides twenty students from across the Caribbean with the unique opportunity to a month of intense training in science and engineering with top professors from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, China as well as from the region. The training is modeled from a very successful program offered by MIT. Two students from Saint John’s College, who are graduating this year, have been accepted for the first time in the program. They are 2010 P.S.E. Top Scorers, Siian Rancharan and Mishek Musa. Both heard the good news while sitting CXC exams. We caught up with them at school today.
Yolanda Gongora, Principal, St. John’s College
“This is a first time for us, I’m not sure if it is the same for other schools before, but for us, it is awesome. It is really a great accomplishment for St. John’s College for two of our students to be accepted to those prestigious four-week intensive training for gifted high school students.”
Siian Rancharan, Accepted into SPISE Program
“At first I was kinda shocked because I was kinda hopeful, but I wasn’t sure that I was gonna get in because, first of all, you are competing against the Caribbean and I am very aware that around the Caribbean, we have some brilliant minds as well. And I think that I am more honored that they accept me to go to the program. And I think that it is going to be an experience just for the fact that it is going to give me an opportunity to expose myself to actual Caribbean.”
Duane Moody
“What is it that you are expected to get? I know you are talking about the experience and all of that, but you’re going to be training with some of the best lecturers in MIT.”
Siian Rancharan
“I think it is going to be the really amazing in the fact that, like I said, one of the hardest parts of being a sixteen year old is finding out what you want to do in life. At sixteen, I am not really sure if I really want to be an engineer or do I really want to be a doctor. But I think, what I really want from this experience is to get a clear understanding of what it really means to be into engineering and into science and to see if that is where I really want to go.”
Yasser Musa
Yasser Musa, Father of Mishek Musa
“I think, it is obvious as parents, we are very proud of him and I feel that he has earned it. From ever since he was a young child, we saw in him this strong curiosity; this sense of always wanting to build things, construct things, investigate things and obviously that is the basis of science—this inquisitive mind. And the subjects that he loves is physics and math and then the ones that he doesn’t do the best in are English and Literature and you don’t know many students like that, right. So you know that he obviously has a part of his brain that is on that level I would say.”
Duane Moody
“What does it say to the caliber of education that you guys are giving here at the institution?”
Yolanda Gongora
Yolanda Gongora
“It says a lot. That is our promotion of both the social skills of our kids and the academic skills of our kids topped with our performance as it relates to our Jesuit values and morals. It says a whole lot that we’ve accomplished. We’ve come a long way with those boys. I started St. John’s College four years ago and I can say that they, along with myself, develop the school to where it is at this time.”
The program is hosted at the Cave Hill Campus of the University of the West Indies in Barbados and runs from July nineteen through to August sixteenth. There is also other news to share. Yan Cattouse, earned the Most Outstanding Student Award in English for ATLIB, while at the Junior College, eight graduating students have been awarded Jesuit scholarships. They are Alexya Perez, Andre Alamina, Betty Tan, Daniel Waight, Megan Martinez, Paul Sylvestre, Reneisha Banner and Raymundo Nunez.
