Rama Khabbaz was selected as 1 of just 4 members of the 2022 Governor’s STEM Team, which honors outstanding high school students for their exceptional efforts and accomplishments in science, technology, engineering or math. Rama is a senior at Valparaiso High School. In addition to taking 10 Advanced Placement (AP) classes, Rama also tutors at the Syrian Community Network, a refugee support organization. In 2020, Rama was accepted into the Girls Who Code Summer Immersion Program and her love of computer science grew. She has coded her own website and worked with machine-learning algorithms, including k-means clustering and gradient descent. This fall, Rama will study computer science. More info here.
Mr. Tarik El-Naggar serves as a STEM Instructor at Valparaiso High School. Nine of Mr. El-Naggar's Valparaiso High School Students earned awards in the 2021 Indiana High School Architectural Design Competition (IHSADC). The Valparaiso High School students made competition history by sweeping the competition earning every available award out of 70 entries from 8 high schools, as well as earning a first-ever 9th award to accommodate all the VHS entries. In addition, Mr. El-Naggar has been featured in a NWI Times article about the VHS Aviation & Flight program and Washington Post Magazine and Architect Magazine articles highlighting his background and the VHS S.T.E.M. program.