(MercuryNews.com) On a typical day at Harker School in San Jose, students are pondering special relativity and mastering multivariable calculus. They're building circuits, splicing genes and, perhaps, dissecting a cat.
Walls are decorated with paintings of epithelial cells. A tall Foucault's pendulum swings from one corner, knocking down a Stephen Hawking doll. Bright blue banners, celebrating victories in science contests, hang from balconies.
But Anita Chetty's classroom is quiet. That's because she's busy planning a research symposium, featuring Sun Microsystems founder and Harker parent Scott McNealy, and she will soon be thinking about the next field trip on invasive species -- in the Galápagos Islands.
Having trouble keeping up? So is much of the rest of the country when it comes to teaching science.
Harker, a young enterprise bankrolled largely by Silicon Valley's newest immigrants, where tuition costs $35,000 a year, is the only school with two finalists at this week's final round of the coveted Intel Awards, the nation's most elite high school science competition.
And to think Harker didn't even have a high school when most of its juniors and seniors were born.
With 20 Intel semifinalists and four finalists in six years, and many other prestigious science titles already to its credit, Harker is fast becoming the "it" school for aspiring researchers, a springboard to a life of inquiry.
How do they do it?
"I don't know what the judges are looking for. I really don't," said Chetty, who chairs Harker's high school science department and helped design the school's research focus. "We are just capitalizing on everything that Silicon Valley has to offer."
Eyes on the prize
Successful students enthusiastically spread the word, then more seek to compete. This year, 80 students applied to the Intel, Siemens, Synopsis and other contests.
For every Texas high school
linebacker who dreams of the NFL, there's a Harker student who will be a first-round intellectual draft choice for Harvard or MIT, on a mission to a Nobel Prize, Fields Medal or MacArthur "genius" grant.
"It's so much fun just to constantly be learning something new every day," said Nikhil Parthasarathy, 17, an Intel finalist for his work researching irregular structures of distant galaxies. He and Rohan Mahajan are representing Harker at the competition in Washington, D.C.
If a student wins a lucrative prize, some of the money gets reinvested in the school, purchasing university-grade research equipment, from a gas chromatograph for analyzing compounds to a spectrophotometer to measure concentrations of chemicals.
"Our students know they're standing on the shoulders of others," said Chetty, a Fiji-born biologist who in 2006 won a Nobel Educator of Distinction award from the Nobel Prize family. "I tell the kids: 'The equipment you're using -- we earned it. Someone else, now at a university, won it for us.'
"It's taken 10 years to finally get here, but we now have all the pieces in place."
Magic formula
Prize-winning research is no longer the kind of undertaking that a student can do at home. Long gone are the days of iconic "October Sky" projects, where boys stood in a field and shot off rockets.
But unlike Harker, most schools don't offer advanced research programs. They may be too far away from university labs or strapped for funds. Their teachers often are too exhausted by the volume of day-to-day work to offer extra help.
Nationally, there is growing concern about the future of American innovation. "We need to teach our kids that it's not just the winner of the Super Bowl who deserves to be celebrated, but the winner of the science fair," President Barack Obama said at his State of the Union address.
Harker has identified a magic formula: dedicated parents, smart students, a rigorous curriculum, creative faculty and the strong support of local universities. And considerable sums of money.
The student body is 70 percent Asian, half of that number being Indian. Harker parents are well-educated professionals, with expectations of high acheivement.
There are four advanced degrees in the families of this year's two finalists: two Ph.D.s and two master's. Both sets of parents are first-generation Indian immigrants.
"Our parents have an innate respect for teachers," Chetty said. "I might be sitting in front of a parent with four or five patents to their name, but they hold me in such high esteem.
"They understand that hard work is the key ingredient to success, and they instill that in their children," she said. "And they know sometimes you fail first. Those are the two ingredients for good scientists."
Sunday lab work
Mahajan, 17, learned about disappointment firsthand -- two weeks into his summer internship at UC Santa Cruz, where he sought ways to improve the efficiency of photoelectrochemical cells. After an initial success, his technique failed. So he had to start over and redesign his project, which involved hot furnaces and toxic gases.
"I was under real time pressure," he said. "I think it inspired me. The new one was a lot more complicated and even better than the original project. I started working a lot harder. So it ended up being a good thing."
His fellow finalist Parthasarathy got interested in astrophysics after a summer program at NASA Ames
Research Center in Mountain View. Although his original research at UC Santa Cruz was done by late summer, the writing of his Intel essays and research paper had to be squeezed into a schedule already packed with tests, tennis practice and Saturdays at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where music theory class starts at 8 a.m.
"Sundays, maybe I watch TV," he said, then laughed. "Not really."
Such research is possible because of Harker's unusual academic curriculum. Students who do well in summer school can study AP physics, chemistry or biology as mere sophomores and juniors. This frees up time for electives like organic chemistry, biotechnology, astronomy and electronics.
It even offers two classes specifically devoted to research: "Research Methods" and "Advanced Research," where they learn how to accept constructive criticism.
"Harker is really willing to make a class for anyone, especially in math," Parthasarathy said. "There are so many kids who are, like, genius kids. There is one kid in ninth grade and he's in my Differential Equations class."
Not just hard work
Students are so well prepared, said physics teacher Chris Spenner, "that I can go beyond the AP curriculum, adding subjects like special relativity. They're so advanced in math, I can do multivariable calculus. "... I've taught at other schools and never seen anything like this."
On field trips to the Galapagos, they study with native children; in Costa Rica, they build turtle pens, snorkel in nature preserves and study biodiversity.
"We try to show them that research is not just hard work -- pound, pound, pound," said biology teacher Matthew Harley, who holds a Ph.D. in biochemistry from Johns Hopkins.
"It's creative thinking, to be able to incorporate all these different concepts from different fields," he said. "Science is our future. Someday they'll have answers to questions we haven't even thought of yet."
The preparation begins early. Even in elementary school, special science classes are held four times a week, by teachers holding bachelor's degrees in the sciences.
By fifth grade, students are using digital microscopes. Experiments, such as altering bacteria, start in sixth grade. By seventh grade, they're offered honors classes in physics, chemistry or biology. Math is taught, not by age, but ability; advanced students simply move up to high school.
There's a middle school "Research Club," led by an engineer with help from a Ph.D. chemist. One youngster, worried about radiation in her family's new kitchen countertops, tested granite slabs with a Geiger counter.
"The questions come from their own minds," said K-8 science department chair Lorna Claerbot.
Contest fever
High school welcomes them with a gleaming new Science & Technology Center: 16 classrooms, a lecture hall, robotics lab, cyber study loft and the pendulum, which demonstrates the rotation of Earth.
Costing $25 million, the building was built with the help of $1 million gifts from parents.
Contest fever starts junior year. Early on, teachers help identify interests, narrow the focus and locate supportive labs where advanced research is already under way. Some students compete for Harker-sponsored internships, which Chetty has arranged. Others must find their own. The only real coaching, teachers say, is about how to write e-mails to busy scientists.
For students working at school, nights can get late.
"I'd pick up Subway sandwiches for both of us, and bring them back," said Harley, recalling lab work until 10 p.m. with one student, now at UC Berkeley. "We kept getting kicked out by security."
Then, quickly, technical papers are written and rewritten. Charts and tables are formatted. Deadlines are met. Awaiting them at the Intel competition this week is a possible $100,000 prize, accolades and college acceptances. But all that would be just an extra thrill, they said. Already they've taken a life-altering step that will carry them into their adult lives.
"What's fun is the fact that no one's ever answered these problems before. No one knows the answer," Parthasarathy said.
"If you can add value, it is an incredible feeling."
*Can you say "AMEN" and do a "ONE TWO STEP" for a school that's making the headlines for doing great things! This school is a prime example of how students are mastering and being very creative. It' something you don't hear about everyday. Harker School is doing big things and definitely helping students acheive in every way they can. They are providing the students with the tools to take their education to whole new level. That is priceless! With all of that being said, we do understand that it cost money to attend, and that this school gets grant money and all the bells and whistles. What they are doing, they need to keep it up as other schools around the nation can take heed to what this school's formula is, and possibly apply it to see if it can work for them. At the end of the day, we as parents, teachers, politicians, community members and others have to get on the grind and try to inspire, motivate and bring up our failing schools. It's not an option, it's a must, especially when schools like "Harker" is thriving.*
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