​By Irvine City News staff

Woodbridge High School’s Academic Decathlon team won the 49th annual Orange County Academic Decathlon title and is heading to Sacramento for the state-level competition. Woodbridge was named the winner Feb. 10 in the Bill Medley Auditorium at Santa Ana High School. The school prevailed over some 40 OC high schools competing, winning with a healthy margin of some 3,000 points over the second place school. The score places them in the top 10 in California, and the top 15 in the United States.

The Woodbridge team includes Seniors Angela Gadon, Sabrina Tubb, Farnoush Sohbati, Krupa Prajapati, Alan Huang and Paiam Moghaddam; Juniors William Tong, Emily Kim, Patrick Park and Daniel Kang; and Sophomores Hannah Hui and Kaaviya Sasikumar. William Tong had the highest overall score in the entire competition.

This is the first time Woodbridge HS has won the county Academic Decathlon title since 2006, though the school’s teams are perennial contenders.

The team came in third last year and in 2012, second in 2015 and 2014, and fourth in 2013, advancing to the state competition each year as one of the wild card teams invited based on high overall scores.

Founded in 1968 by former Orange County Superintendent of Schools Dr. Robert Peterson, the first decathlon was held at Bolsa Grande High School in Garden Grove in 1969.

Academic decathlons are 10-event scholastic contests staged at the county, state and national levels. Nine-member teams compete for the highest scores on multiple-choice exams, speeches, interviews and essay assignments, concluding with the Super Quiz Relay, a Jeopardy-like competition. Each team must include three “Honor” students (those with GPAs of 3.75 or above), three “Scholastic” students (GPAs of 3.00 to 3.74) and three “Varsity” students (GPAs of 2.99 or below).

This year’s academic theme is World War II. Students are tested in the areas of art, language and literature, mathematics, music, science, and social science. And less any adults out there imagine they could fare well in the competition, here are just a few of hundreds of topics from the 2016-17 curricula students are expected to master:
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1.  Art: Abstract Expressionism and the American Artistic Response to WWII
2.  Economics: International Capital Flows in an Open Economy
3.  Literature: Interpret W. H. Auden’s, “September 1, 1939”
4.  Mathematics: The Graph of a Linear Function y = ax + b
5.  Music: Fanfare for the Common Man (1942), by Aaron Copeland
6.  Social Science: Key features of Fascist ideology and practices
7.  Science: The Mathematics and Detection of Radioactive Decay 

Good luck to Woodbridge High School Warriors at the March 23 competition in Sacramento! 

By Irvine City News staff

Thanks to a $40 million gift from the William and Sue Gross Family Foundation and approval by the UC Board of Regents, UCI’s already highly ranked nursing program will be officially updated to a nursing school.

The foundation gift, the largest in UCI history, will fund construction of a state-of-the-art building, dramatically increasing classroom and research space. The Sue & Bill Gross School of Nursing also plans to double faculty size and student enrollment and to expand nurse-managed community clinics.

“The campus has long desired to have our nursing program become a school, and we are thrilled that the day has come,” said UCI Chancellor Howard Gillman. “A terrific combination of public and private support will ensure a top-quality education for many more talented students – and enable us to hire nursing field leaders to train them – to help fill the pipeline of prepared healthcare professionals.”

The school will grow rapidly to address a nationally identified need for 1.2 million new nurses in the next five years. As Baby Boomers grow older and veteran caregivers and professors retire, California and other parts of the Southwest are already seeing shortages.

California’s nurse-to-population ratio has ranked a dismal 48th in the nation for the past 10 years. In 2013, California had an estimated 657 RNs for every 100,000 population, well below the national average of 874 RNs per 100,000. The Nurse Workforce Report Card gave California’s RN supply a “D” grade and projects that by 2030 the state will be more than 193,000 nurses short of its nursing needs.

UCI’s Nursing Science Program has earned a strong reputation since it began in 2007. NurseJournal.org named UCI nursing as one of the top 10 programs in the western United States, and its nurse practitioner faculty is consistently ranked in the country’s top 25. At UCI, nursing ranks as one of the most competitive majors with an acceptance rate of only 3.6 percent, according to reports. The campus received more than 2,450 applications in the fall for 40 freshman slots.
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The UCI nursing school’s enrollment will double in the next decade, from about 200 to about 400 students.

By ​Irvine City News staff

​IUSD’s annual Mathletics Night featuring a UCI men’s basketball game will take place on Feb. 18 at the Bren Events Center. The game between UCI and UCSB is free for IUSD middle school teachers, students and their families (four tickets are free, more can be purchased). The math aspect of the evening challenges the students to keep track of the game statistics and use them to calculate percentages. The students whose calculations are correct (or closest) will be announced at halftime. IUSD, UCI and the Irvine Public Schools Foundation sponsor the evening. Register for tickets by Monday, Feb. 13, at:
ucirvinesports.com/iusd2017
 
A student-teacher team from University High School will be one of only 15 teams from throughout the country to participate in a National History Day program that includes travel to and research in Washington, D.C., and Normandy, France. University High student Sonia Kelly and teacher Judy Richonne will tell the story of a fallen World War II hero as part of the Normandy: Sacrifice for Freedom program. The goal of the program is to teach a new generation of students about the sacrifices and challenges faced during World War II. The Uni High team will research the war, D-Day and other aspects of the era while focusing on one WWII “silent hero” who died and is buried in the Normandy American Cemetery. During their time in France, each student will deliver a eulogy at the grave of the hero they spent a year studying and getting to know. “When they read their eulogies they are reading a eulogy for someone they know, someone whose story they are responsible for telling,” said Dr. Cathy Gorn, executive director of National History Day. “It results in a powerful, and often tearful, understanding of the sacrifice these Silent Heroes made in World War II.” The student-teacher teams will create websites as a lasting legacy to the year they spent, and to the hero they honor through the program. The teams will also make presentations to local community groups, schools and classes, and veterans organizations. Albert H. Small funds the program. A veteran himself, Small’s donation covers overseas travel, courses, and room and board for each student/teacher team. The University High team is the only one from a California high school participating this year.
 
As reported in the OC Register, Irvine Unified School District is planning for Measure E upgrades at 21 of the 28 schools to be improved with funds from the $319 million bond approved by voters in the June 2016 election. Construction on the first improvement projects will start after school lets out for summer.
 
Irvine’s excellent and deserving public school teachers are receiving a 3.7 percent raise this academic year, thanks to a new collective bargaining agreement with Irvine Teachers Association approved by the Irvine Unified School District board in November. Teachers who are working for the district on Feb. 1 will also get a 1.2 percent of salary bonus. The bonus and the pay bumps are necessary to retain and attract the top-level teachers Irvine families expect and deserve, and are designed to help make up for furloughs and salary freezes necessitated by the recession. Though fewer than 20 percent of Irvine teachers live in Irvine, according to reports, we hope any bonus celebratory spending takes place at least partly within the city. Restaurant servers, chefs and bartenders need love (and tips!), too.