Suffolk School Notebook: 4 LI teams win at Youth Business Summit
Four Long Island teams placed in the top 10 of a national competition that challenged them to showcase their business and social media skills.
Virtual Enterprises International's Youth Business Summit: Reimagined asked teams to use the hashtag #YBSReimagined to post updates about their fictional companies to such social media platforms as Instagram and Twitter. The winners were "impressive in the quality and content of their posts," the organization said.
Long Island's top-10 teams, which each received $50,000 in virtual enterprise money, were from Baldwin, Huntington, Lynbrook and Sachem East high schools.
"As one of the 10 teams to receive this incredible honor, we were psyched," Lynbrook virtual enterprise teacher Benedict Tieniber said. "During a time of remote learning, they stepped it up and came together as a team day after day."
Lynbrook's Checkmate business consisted of an app that helps users budget efficiently, while Baldwin's SuppLI business consisted of subscription boxes featuring products solely from Long Island.
Huntington's Snooz³ business consisted of a sleep lifestyle line with customizable pillows, and Sachem East's Dough-Nation business consisted of creative doughnuts free of food allergens.
"We frequently posted pictures saying how we have been dealing with this quarantine and how we have been staying together as a class,” said Huntington junior Taylor Case, the chief executive officer of Snooz³.
To reach the national level, the teams were among the winners this spring at the Long Island Business Plan Competition held at American Portfolio Financial Services in Holbrook.
HAUPPAUGE
Roger Rees Award
Hauppauge High School junior Vincent Gerardi has won the up-and-coming actor category of the 2020 Roger Rees Awards for Excellence in Student Performance. He is the sole award winner from Suffolk County.
The Roger Rees Awards recognize distinction in student performance and outstanding achievement in high school musical theater throughout the metropolitan area. Students were judged on characterization, movement, musicianship and presence.
The awards are presented by Disney Theatrical Group and the Broadway Education Alliance in association with Camp Broadway LLC.
MELVILLE
Innovators of Tomorrow
St. Anthony's High School freshman Miah Margiano and sophomore Quinn Murphy were among five winners nationwide in the Innovators of Tomorrow Contest, which was developed by the publishing company Scholastic and the Arconic Foundation. The contest asked students to conceptualize, design and diagram an invention that solves a real-life problem using advanced manufacturing.
Margiano's invention was a machine that extracts carbon emissions from the air and converts it to ethanol, while Murphy's invention was a 3D printer that turns plastic waste into large-scale objects.
For winning, they each received a tablet and a $1,000 grant for classroom use at their school.
ISLANDWIDE
Scholarship winners
Twenty-six Long Island students are among approximately 3,300 nationwide named winners of college-sponsored scholarships through the National Merit Scholarship Corp. These awards provide between $500 and $2,000 annually for up to four years of undergraduate study at the institution financing the scholarship.
Winners and their high schools were: Eirini Drosos, Bethpage; Natalie Walsh, Centereach; Connor Brandvold, Chaminade; Paige Robinson, Commack; Kayla Quinn, Garden City; Tessie Dong, Talia Katz, Christina Liu, Timothy Liu, Shourav Saha and Keena Yin, Great Neck South; Jenna Chin, Herricks; Jack Hoffman, George W. Hewlett; Sarah Choi, Hicksville; Paul Bartolemea, Kellenberg; Alp Turgut, Jericho; Dohyeon Park, Manhasset; Jack Chillemi, Massapequa; Gisele Lachman, Oyster Bay; Cameron Robinson, Plainview-Old Bethpage JFK; Noah Sollinger, Paul D. Schreiber; Ritvik Chilakamarthy and Brendan Dervan, Smithtown East; and Jake Butkevich and Benjamin Templeton, Ward Melville. Jackson DeMasi, a home-schooled student from Shirley, was also a winner.
— MICHAEL R. EBERT
Michael R. Ebert is an education researcher and has worked for Newsday in various capacities since 2003. He was part of an 11-person team named as 2008 Pulitzer Prize finalists for investigative coverage of the LIRR's platform safety issues.
