Life at UC Davis: From The Hills of Dublin to the Flats of Davis
by Kevin Cappa (Dublin High Class of 2010, University of California – Davis Freshman)
Kevin Cappa (right)
I graduated Dublin High School in 2010 and started my college journey this Fall at the University of California – Davis. My major is biomedical engineering and as a result I’m going to be taking lots of math, science and engineering courses. Not surprisingly, I like numbers and facts, so let’s start with some:
- About half of the people who live in Davis are students.
- Davis invented the bike lane, and has bike lanes or bike paths everywhere. And if there is somewhere too far away to bike there is an amazing bus system that is free to UC Davis students.
- Davis is as flat as a pancake, making it even more bicycle friendly.
- One out of every 315 Californians is a UCD Alumnus.
- Davis is (geographically) the largest UC.
When you put all of these things together, you get a complete college immersion experience. It seems like everything in Davis is college. You go downtown and all of the restaurants have lunch buffets, and all of the cafes are filled with students on computers studying away. In the dining commons, a lot of the food is grown locally, moved as little as possible to maximize freshness and minimize the carbon footprint. Davis is a world where everyone is young, and striving to learn. A world of freedom.
This freedom is probably the hardest part about college life. You are in class a lot less, and you become your own supervisor. There is no one to tell you what to do or when to do it. When you are in high school, every day is (more or less) the same. You wake up and go to school at eight o’clock. You eat lunch around 12:15 and at 2:40 you go home and start your homework until your parents feed you dinner. When you come to college that all changes. For starters, every day is different. You might have four classes one after the other on Monday, and then only one class on Tuesday. And on Wednesday you might have all the same lectures as Monday but different discussions. Every day requires you to create a unique schedule, and you have to keep to that schedule and remember what time you need to wake up and what time you need to be places, because your classes might not lie right next to each other – you can have an hour break in between, a two-hour break or even an eight-hour break between a morning class and a night class.
Dublin High School Teacher Kim Baumann Inspires a Love of Science
Dublin High School Science Teacher Kim Baumann inspires her students to learn by asking questions – by becoming active participants in their education. Kim didn’t follow a traditional path to teaching and started her career in industry as a chemical engineer.
Kim grew up and went school in Canton, Ohio before attending Grove City College (Grove City, PA) where she earned a BS in Chemical Engineering in 1985. Kim was hired out of college by Norton (Worchester, MA) as a Product Engineer, moved several times and later accepted a job in Des Moines, Iowa where she met her husband (a member of the U.S. Army). The military moved the Baumann family to Ansbach, Germany (in the heart of Bavaria) where Kim landed a civilian job with the Army as the chief of the management engineering and systems branch within the Directorate of Engineering and Housing Division .
Kim Baumann: “It was a great experience – the people I worked with spoke German, so I had to learn some German really quickly, and I was there during a unique time in history because that’s when the wall came down, the reunification of Germany. I was able to visit Berlin as the wall was coming down and it one of the greatest memories of my life. You could see on the other side of the wall, across the river, in East Berlin how dismal, grey and dreary it was. There was a checkpoint where they were coming through – these people looked so downtrodden – but as soon as they crossed into West Berlin I have never seen a person change so dramatically, like a weight was lifted off their shoulders. It was amazing – I will never forget that experience.”
OneDublin.org: Why did you make the transition from working in industry to teaching? What was the trigger?
Life at Penn State – Going from a Gael to a Nittany Lion
Melyssa Lloyd (right side) and Friends enjoy Penn State Football
by Melyssa Lloyd (Dublin High Class of 2010, Penn State Freshman)
I’m going to be totally honest, leaving Dublin was undoubtedly the scariest thing I’ve ever had to go through. Although I’m now attending the school I have wanted to attend ever since I was 7 years old, hopping on an 8-hour plane ride across the country was a little more nerve-racking than I had expected. Here I am now, at The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State) almost completely settled in.
The Penn State school system is a little different than California State and UC systems. Here, there are 26 different campuses; they are all Penn State but different campuses offer different majors. I am at the branch campus in Erie, Pennsylvania where I’m hoping to major in Marketing with a minor in International Business. I chose to come to this specific campus because it’s not too big and I get more personalized learning with smaller class sizes before I move to the main campus which holds over 40,000 students. I feel like I really get the most out of my education by being at this campus because I already have established relationships with my professors. My biggest class is 150 students and my smallest is 10. Honestly, I get the best of both worlds. I still go to all of the football games (we have the second largest college football stadium in the country, not trying to brag or anything 🙂 and experience the perks of going to a big school, but with less overwhelming class sizes.
I was pretty involved in high school, so I knew I wanted to be just as involved here in college. I have joined the Student Government Association as well as the sorority of Alpha Sigma Alpha. Keeping busy is pretty important in college because you have so much more free time and a lot of people don’t really know what to do with the extra time. Just through these past 2 months I have learned that organizing my time is truly key. I write a daily to-do list in order of when things need to be completed and times that I have meetings. This really helps out a lot and even just crossing off things on my list when I finish them makes me feel accomplished.
Rachel Cooperstein with Homecoming King Nominees in the Homecoming Parade
The Dublin High School community knows that these three words describe the school: “inclusive”, “tolerant” and “spirit”. Dublin High’s spirit came alive Friday evening in the form of Rachel Cooperstein. Rachel, in front of shoulder-to-shoulder packed stands in Gael Stadium, was crowned Homecoming Queen by her fellow students. For those in attendance it was an unforgettable moment.
Rachel was born with Down’s Syndrome but that didn’t discourage her from pursuing a dream to cheer for the school she loves. Rachel wrote on her inspirational website Pretty Special World “I know I’m Downs, but I like UP better. Everybody can be UP Syndrome.”
Rachel was able to join the Dublin High Cheerleading Team for her senior year thanks to the inclusive policy of recently hired Dublin High Cheerleading Coach Kristine Cousins. Ms. Cousins, interviewed earlier this year by OneDublin.org (read more…), believes strongly that all students who want to participate in Cheer, and who are prepared to do the work, be allowed to join the team. Kristine successfully applied this policy while coaching Cheer at Fallon School. The result at both schools has been a significantly expanded Cheer program that breaks the stereotype of cheerleading as an exclusive clique.
At a time when intolerance, bullying and tragedy on high school campuses across the country has been dominating the news, it is important to share the positive role model that is Dublin High School. Congratulations Rachel, you are truly the spirit of Dublin High School!
More news and coverage of Rachel’s story from across the Bay Area:
- CBS 5 Eyewitness News covered the Homecoming Queen announcement in an extensive story: http://tinyurl.com/go-gaels
- [UPDATE Feb 2011] KTVU News covered DHS Cheer and Rachel during a weekend story: High School Cheerleader Squad Features Student With Down Syndrome
- [UPDATE Mar 2011] Woman’s World magazine published a full page story on Rachel Cooperstein and her website: read more…
- Alan Elias’ terrific article “A princess of Dublin” – the first to cover Rachel’s story – and Alan’s follow-up article: “Rachel’s big day“
- [UPDATE May 2011] Michelle Smith McDonald’s ESPN article: An unforgettable night, an unforgettable girl
- Dublin Patch’sseries of articles include several excellent video segments:
Dublin High School Homecoming Queen Rachel Cooperstein (left side)
Dublin High Homecoming Skit Rally 2010 – Time Lapse Movie
Dublin High School’s gym was standing-room only Thursday evening for the annual Homecoming Skit Rally. For the families, friends, alumni and curious community members who were unable to attend OneDublin.org is pleased to present the first ever Dublin High Homecoming Skit Rally Time Lapse Movie. Over 90 minutes of fun packed into under 5 minutes (from over 7,000 photos captured in one second increments).
How did OneDublin.org do this? For the budding science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) students here is what we did:
Dublin High School Athletics Welcomes New Sports Complex
by Michelle McDonald
Dublin High School Sports Complex
As Dublin High prepares to cut the ribbon on the brand-new Dublin High Sports Complex (part of the $120M Dublin High Renewal Project), the Gaels’ athletic teams are offering students more options and experiencing more success than ever.
“If you look over the last 10 years, our athletic program has fully evolved a few times over,” said athletic director Shawn McHugh. “And our community has done a great job of investing in our program.”
Dublin High School offers a total of 22 athletic programs for boys and girls, serving 650-700 student-athletes.
As part of the Diablo-Foothill Athletic League, the Gaels have competed with increasing frequency in North Coast Section events. In the last year, 10 programs competed in NCS events, including:
- Cross-Country (boys and girls)
- Boys Soccer
- Girls Basketball
- Track and field (boys and girls)
- Baseball
- Swimming (boys and girls)
- Boys’ golf
The boys soccer team won the NCS Division II soccer championship last winter, defeating overwhelming favorite Bishop O’Dowd High School, while boys soccer, and boys golf finished with DFAL League Championships.
Johanna Wright – Google – Director of Product Management
Chances are you found your way to this article through a Google search. Just over a month ago Google announced that they are serving 1 billion users per week, and launched Google Instant – Google’s new feature that instantly shows search results based on predictions while you type.
OneDublin.org recently met with Johanna Wright, Director of Product Management at Google, who led the team responsible for Google Instant (prior to Google Instant, Johanna worked on Google Universal Search). Johanna majored in math at Barnard College (Class of 1997) and later earned an MBA from UCLA (Class of 2005).
Dublin students, parents and educators – if you’ve ever wondered how technology companies like Google bring cool new products to market, read on. And read about more women in science, technology, engineering and math fields (including interviews with MythBusters, Disney Imagineering, NASA and more), in our Women in STEM Series of articles.
James Morehead: What experiences in middle and high school led to your interest in math?
Johanna Wright: Growing up I didn’t have any conception that math was hard or that I shouldn’t do math. I think it was kind of expected in my family that we would be good at math. My mom’s a math teacher – she was actually my eighth grade math teacher. My mom’s pretty innovative and she taught a lot of after school classes on how to combine art and mathematics. Math was a core piece of my childhood and also art, and those were my two favorite classes later on in college. My mom had a big influence on that.
I went to a high school at the Commonwealth School in Boston and there were two math tracks. They tested us to see which track we should be in, and I tested into the Math B track. I remember thinking that I should be in Math A, so I went and talked to the Math A teacher, Mr. Kaplan, and said, ‘Hey I think I should be in the Math A track,’ and he agreed to give me a shot. My parents encouraged me and made me think I was good at math, and the teacher took a chance on me. I think there’s a lesson there which is to stand up for yourself and push forward.
The teacher was superb, really inspirational. I loved that class and the students loved that class, and our teacher made us think that math was exciting. So those were the big influences for me in junior high and high school – my mom and my high school math teacher.
Morehead: Where did you go after high school?
by Andrea Ramirez
On Friday September 10, 2010 Dublin High School’s Varsity Volleyball Team had the chance of a lifetime. Elliot Blake, USA Olympic Sitting Volleyball Coordinator/Coach, came to teach Dublin High School’s able-bodied girls to play the sport they love, but with the twist of sitting on the floor.
The Varsity players began practice by learning how to move across the floor. The girls quickly realized how difficult of a challenge sitting volleyball was really going to be. While the concepts are the same in both sitting volleyball and traditional volleyball, the court is smaller, the net lower and the game much more taxing. Coach Blake ran the practice, critiqued performance and offered tips that are often heard during a DHS volleyball practice.
After practicing the key skills required for sitting volleyball, the girls were eager to play. Even though a six on six scrimmage is old news to these DHS players, it didn’t take long for the girls to see just how difficult sitting volleyball is to play. While the Varsity Team had learned how to perform the skills and moving strategies during practice, desperation to keep the ball up during play erased all memories of earlier competence. The hardest rule for the girls to follow was that a player’s behind must completely touch the floor when the girl is in contact with the ball.
“Race to Nowhere” Draws Large Turnout Across Dublin
“Race to Nowhere”, the award-winning documentary created by Bay Area filmmaker Viki Abeles (Lafayette, California) that includes profiles of students from East Bay schools (including San Ramon Valley High School) as well as Stanford University, ended a very successful run in Dublin last night at Fallon School (following showings last week at Green Elementary and Dublin High). Over 550 parents, students, educators and community members attended the showings. The film documents “the pressures faced by American schoolchildren and their teachers in a system and culture obsessed with the illusion of achievement, competition and the pressure to perform.”
The film also spotlights Dr. Denise Pope, senior lecturer at the Stanford University School of Education and c0-founder of “Challenge Success“. Ms. Pope co-authored “Success with Less Stress“, research profiled in the film (read more…).
Thanks to the effort of dedicated parents in the Green and Fallon PFCs, and Dublin High PFSO, parents across Dublin had a chance to see the film and engage teachers, school administration and neighbors in passionate debates on the future of our education system.
The finally tally from each showing:
- Fallon School: 275
- Dublin High: 175
- Green Elementary: 117
Dublin Patch and Patch sites in neighboring cities provided excellent coverage of the events including articles written by local parents:
- ‘Race to Nowhere’ Focuses on Stressed-Out Students
- Local Parents Still Talking about ‘Race to Nowhere’
- The Dark Side of Striving for a 4.5 GPA, a Near-Perfect SAT and the Ivy League Dream
- ‘Race to Nowhere’ Sparks Discussion on Stressed-Out Students (from Danville Patch)
- Lafayette Filmmaker Questions Our Quest for Success, and How Our Kids Suffer as a Result (from Lamorinda Patch)
For those who were unable to attend, there are additional showings planned across the Bay Area in the coming weeks (more information available here).
California Study Highlights Value of Going to College
Updated research recently published by the California Postsecondary Education Commission reinforces what most of us already know: the level of educational attainment directly impacts income levels and employment rates. For parents who have seen the documentary “Race to Nowhere” and are concerned that this data will only increase the stress impacting our students it is important to note that this data represents the average for all graduates – not just the small number of graduates from the most elite and selective institutions.
Despite all of the challenges facing America’s school system we are still home to thousands of excellent post-secondary options for students – pick-up the latest College Handbook (published by the CollegeBoard) and there are 1,700 2-year and 2,100 4-year colleges profiled. There are many pathways to a college degree and many excellent colleges to attend. (OneDublin.org has compiled a comprehensive College Primer for Parents covering key aspects of college admissions planning for parents.)
From 2007-9 California’s unemployment rate jumped from 5.0% to 9.8%. Average income over the same period fell. Drill down into the data and those without a high school degree went from an unemployment rate of 9.6% to 17.3% whereas those with a graduate degree were less severely impacted (2.4% in 2005 and 3.8% in 2009). The impact on income followed a similar trend – those without a high school degree saw their income fall from 2007-9 whereas those with a graduate degree saw their income rise over the same period. The recession has impacted everyone, but those with less education were much more severely impacted. Looking at the detail over the period:
OneDublin.org 