As is customary after the Senior Project presentations, our founders Dr. Michael Block and Ms. Olga Block, review the Senior Projects across all BASIS Curriculum Schools, and in committee choose several students to earn their generous Founders' Prize. The Founders' Prize recognizes students for their efforts in several categories of Top Projects: student/faculty collaboration, greatest student initiative, original research and most inventive project. We are pleased to share that one of our BASIS Independent Silicon Valley seniors, Sergey P., is one of the recipients of this year's accolade for Top Senior Project demonstrating original research.
Sergey's Senior Project focused on a long time hobby - birding, and he set out to investigate the impact of urbanization on mimicry in Northern Mockingbirds. You can read more about his fascinating project here. A key component of the Senior Project is to maintain a blog detailing the twelve week research period. Sergey's blog yields lots of information, and a beautiful photo or two-we highly recommend taking a read!
At graduation, Sergey was presented with a letter from Dr. Michael Block and Ms. Olga Block, letting him know that they were thoroughly impressed with his original research, and that he was the recipient of a 2018 Founders' Prize, which includes a $10,000 scholarship.
Sergey P. and our Head of School, Mr. Toby Walker
We couldn't be more proud of Sergey, and are excited to hear about his adventures in college next year. We hope he keeps bird watching!