Gabrielle Mills’ interest in global health was sparked in high school when she read "The Hot Zone: A Terrifying True Story," a best-selling book about the spread of a highly contagious deadly virus.
​
“I read 'The Hot Zone' during biology class my freshman year. It was really fascinating and I decided then that I wanted to learn more about global health and disease,” said Mills, who attended Arcadia High School in Phoenix.

Now a senior in Barrett, The Honors College, majoring in biomedical engineering with a minor in global health, Mills is set to graduate in May. She has been awarded the Gates Cambridge Scholarship, which will cover the cost of graduate studies at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. In October, she will continue to fulfill her interest in global health and engineering by beginning a PhD in chemical engineering with an emphasis on research.

Mills said she wants to work at the crossroads of chemical engineering and epidemiology to develop modes of treatment for infectious bacterial diseases, such as tuberculosis and cholera.
“My ultimate goal is to be a principal researcher and oversee research focused on alleviating disease. No matter how much work has been done in the last, say 100 years, solutions to disease still elude us. It’s such a complex problem and that’s what draws me to it. I like a challenge,” she said.
Gabrielle Mills, recipient of the Gates Cambridge Scholarship, will attend the University of Cambridge for a doctorate in chemical engineering.
​
Since 2016, Mills has been interning at the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) in Phoenix, where she conducted research on pediatric disorders and created a model that allows researchers to determine the optimal anti-epileptic drug for young patients without the need for testing on the children themselves.
After completing her PhD, Mills said she may opt to stay in the UK or move to somewhere on the East Coast of the United States.
“I want to be in a location where I can travel more easily because my work will be worldwide,” she said.
Mills is one of 34 Americans chosen this year for the Gates Cambridge Scholarship, which was established in October 2000 by a $210 million donation from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to the University of Cambridge.
The scholarship, awarded to outstanding applicants from countries outside the UK, fully funds postgraduate study and research in any subject at the University of Cambridge. The selection criteria are outstanding intellectual ability, leadership potential, and a commitment to improving the lives of others.
Mills is the fourth Gates Cambridge Scholar from ASU in the past five years. In the 2018 competition year, then-Barrett senior Charity Bhebhe was selected as a Gates Cambridge Scholar, and in the 2016 competition year, ASU alum Michael Meaney was selected. Other recent Gates Cambridge Scholars from ASU include Blake Thomson (2015), Nicole Person-Rennell (2011), and Ben Strauber (2010).
“The Gates Cambridge Scholarship is among the most prestigious postgraduate fellowships in the world. One feature that distinguishes the Gates Cambridge Scholarship program from other major graduate fellowships is its emphasis on 'social leadership,' " said Kyle Mox, director of the Office of National Scholarship Advisement, located in the Barrett Honors College Tempe complex. "The program seeks to create a network of future global leaders who will work together to solve big problems. One of the main factors in Gabby’s selection was her commitment to combatting lethal infectious diseases.” 
“The continued success of ASU students in this fellowship competition is no fluke — ASU and the Gates Cambridge Scholarship program have similar priorities. Both are focused on building thought leaders who are committed to improving the lives of others,” Mox said. 

Article Link : https://asunow.asu.edu/20190222-asu-senior-gabrielle-mills-wins-prestigious-gates-cambridge-scholarship

written by
Nicole Greason
Public relations and publicity manager , Barrett, The Honors College
480-965-8415 nicole.greason@asu.edu

Jacob Staudenmaier, Arcadia High School Senior, won the Best Overall Film Award at the 2018 Arizona Student Film Festival Competition on April 14. Jacob’s film “Oasis” won First Place in the High School Category and then was selected as the top film out of all finalists. The 15 finalists were screened at the Harkins Scottsdale 101 Theaters as part of the 2018 Phoenix Film Festival. This year’s competition had the most submissions ever, with films entered by hundreds of students from all over the state of Arizona.

The film “Oasis” was an independent project undertaken by Jacob Staudenmaier, with production assistance from Chris Smith. “Oasis” was prepared pursuant to the following prompt: “Without the use of dialogue or voice over, make a film that is less than two minutes long about a character making a difficult and dramatic decision. Show that the character is pulled in two different directions at an emotional level, visualize their process of consideration, and show that they make a decision.”

The film “Mute”, which was undertaken as an Arcadia advanced film-making class project, was also selected as a finalist in this year’s competition. Under the direction of Film Instructor Eric Luse, the film students were not permitted to use any music whatsoever in creating the film. The film focused on a situation of teenage bullying. Students involved in “Mute” were Jacob Staudenmaier, Dash McDonald, Lindsay Formica, Shane Babasick, Heather DeGroote and Costi Haig.

Started in 2007, the Arizona Student Film Festival is a yearly film competition that celebrates the next generation of Arizona Filmmakers. Students from all over the state of Arizona are invited to submit their best short films under 8 minutes. The films are reviewed by professional judges and only a select few are chosen as Finalists to be screened during the Phoenix Film Festival.

​Arcadia High School students earned one of the top awards at the Student Television & Film National Competition (“STN”) held in Nashville, Tennessee last week. The Arcadia students had to create, write, film, produce and edit a short documentary in 8 hours or less for the “Crazy 8s” Documentary Film Competition. The prompt for the documentary was “Sounds Good To Me”. For their efforts, the Titans were awarded one of the highest recognitions among hundreds of schools competing from all over the United States. Nearly 4,000 students from schools throughout the country, including Hawaii and Alaska, competed in multiple contests during the four-day event. In addition to the documentary competition, the Arcadia students were required to showcase their skills and talents in TV news & broadcasting, film writing, cinematography, editing and production based upon certain themes/prompts, specific time constraints and stringent rules. The competition was held March 15-18 at the Gaylord Hotel & Conference Center. Based on auditions, 10 juniors and seniors were selected to represent Arcadia at the National Competition: 
 
Jacob Staudenmaier (senior)
Nick Forney (senior)
Dallas Greene (senior)
Narsah (Tate) Kharnis (senior)
Christopher Smith (junior)
Rachael Schulman (junior)
Lindsay Formica (junior)
Max Swiergol (junior)
Dash McDonald (junior)
Alex Teneyck (junior)
 
Eric Luse, Arcadia High School ANN & Film Instructor, and another SUSD teacher served as chaperones for the competition. Thank you to everyone who supported these students with donations and other assistance, making it possible for them to compete against other Film & TV students at the National level. CONGRATULATIONS TO THESE STUDENTS FOR THEIR AMAZING ACCOMPLISHMENTS!

The 2018 Arizona Student Film Festival has announced the selection of its 15 finalists – which includes two films submitted by students in the Arcadia High School film program, under the direction of Instructor Eric Luse. This year’s competition had the most submissions ever, with films entered by hundreds of students all over the state of Arizona.


The Arcadia films selected were “Mute” and “Oasis” (links are below). “Mute” was undertaken as an Arcadia class project where the students were not permitted to use any music whatsoever in creating the film. The film focused on a situation of teenage bullying. Students involved in “Mute” were Jacob Staudenmaier, Dash McDonald, Lindsay Formica, Shane Babasick, Heather DeGroote and Costi Haig. The film “Oasis” was an independent project undertaken by Jacob Staudenmaier, with production assistance from Chris Smith. The film “Oasis” was prepared pursuant to the following prompt: “Without the use of dialogue or voice over, make a film that is less than two minutes long about a character making a difficult and dramatic decision. Show that the character is pulled in two different directions at an emotional level, visualize their process of consideration, and show that they make a decision.”

The winning film will be announced during
The Phoenix Film Festival
Harkins 101 Scottsdale Theaters
on April 14, 2018

For more information about the Arizona Student Film Festival:
http://www.azstudentfilmfestival.org/welcome-marquee/#home

Congratulations to these talented Arcadia film makers!

from ARCADIA NEWS on January 1st, 2018 by Nick Smith  see here

Arcadia News "TEACHERS WE LOVE WINNER" for February 2018: Angie Berk, Arcadia High School
Nominated by: Cathy Massimi

What was your path to becoming a teacher? 
I’m from right in the middle of Illinois and moved here in 1980. I went to Chandler High School and then to ASU, where I got my degree in Mechanical Engineering. I worked in that field for a while and then spent time raising my children. 
Engineering was never really my passion though. Science was. So, I wasn’t always happy with my job. My parents were both in education, so I was familiar with that career, and I’d spent a lot of time helping out in science classrooms when my kids were in school and I remember really liking it. I did my student teaching at Desert Mountain and taught at Chaparral for six years before coming to Arcadia. 
 
You teach both Biology and Physics. How do you balance teaching two different subjects? 
Everybody thinks it’s a weird combination, but science is science. I bring a lot of biology knowledge into physics class, and vice versa. As an example, we were learning about terminal velocity in physics and using a falcon as an example. We got to learn about how they fly from a biology standpoint, so there are fun crossovers like that.  

Are there methods of teaching that you have moved away from as you became more experienced? 
When I first started teaching, I made power points for everything, especially in physics. It was a new technology and everyone thought “look, animation”, you know? I had grown up with chalkboards, so it seemed cool to me! But I noticed that I didn’t get a ton of excitement with it from the students. 
I was taking some modeling classes at ASU and learning about that method completely changed the way I teach. The modeling curriculum is almost Socratic in the sense that a teacher stays out of it as much as possible. You ask leading questions, but let the kids discover things. 
I think science should be hands on! If I could do labs every single day, I would do it. Now obviously that’s not always possible, but I’ll always try to look at my schedule and make sure that we do labs several days each week. So instead of saying, here’s the equations, we do a lab where the students collect data, make graphs, and come up with the equations on their own. I like everything to be as hands on as possible.  

​What do you enjoy about teaching at Arcadia High School? 
I love that Arcadia has such a community feel about it. I talk to kids whose parents, and sometimes even grandparents, went to the school. That’s rare enough, but especially in Phoenix! The kids are proud of being here, you can feel that excited vibe when you go to assemblies and games. It’s a great place to teach! ​

The Arcadia Cross Country boys and girls teams both finished fourth overall at last Friday’s Sectional Meet at the Cross Roads Park in Gilbert, thus propelling both teams to the 2017 State Championship Meet. The Titans had three medalists at the Sectionals – Senior Dallas Greene took 4th overall in the boys race, with Junior Ben Waggener finishing 13th. For the girls, Nichole Kaiser raced to 4th place. The State Meet is set for this Saturday, Nov. 4 at the Cave Creek Golf Course. Girls will run at 8:30 AM, and Boys at 9:30 AM.
GO TITANS – LET’S ROCK STATE!!!

Pre-State Pasta Dinner for all Runners – This Thursday at 6 PM (or whenever practice ends) at the Jacobs Home.

For complete results from Sectional, see link:
https://www.athletic.net/CrossCountry/Results/Meet.aspx?Meet=134105#/Results

The Arcadia Boys Golf team recently participate in the Dobson Classic Golf Tournament. They won the tournament by 31 strokes over the 2nd place team, shooting an INCREDIBLE 37 under par and BREAKING THE STATE RECORD!

They shot as a team 16 under par at the end of the 1st round on Wednesday, 9/27/17 breaking a state record. Then on Thursday, 9/28/17 they broke their own state record by shooting a score of 21 under par!

A HUGE CONGRATS to the boys as they make final preparations for the State Tournament!

We celebrated Titan of the Month with lunch provided by Hungry Howie's & gifts from the PTO to honor these fine students with Principal Stevens. This event is always by invitation only. Each student nominated, received a certificate of recognition and we would like to congratulate every one of them.

Jack Spier - Tinnley Subsin - Joshua Yazzie - Jennifer Duong - Bradley Anderson - Athena Ashcraft
Mikko Hallikainen - Lauren Sayre - Ian Jarvis - Janette Hernandez - Megan Little

The Arcadia student film “Orientation” was selected as the only High School entry at the Fifth Annual Jerome Film Festival, September 7-10, 2017. The other films selected for the Student Films Competition were all made by college film-makers. Current Arcadia students involved in the film were Jacob Staudenmaier (Director/Editor), Lindsay Formica (Screenplay Writer/Sound), and Heather DeGroote (Photography). The students are enrolled in Advanced Film-Making taught by ANN & Film Instructor Eric Luse.  The film concerns an awkward man who attempts to have a successful job interview, but it ends up going south very quickly. The Jerome Film Festival was recently selected by MovieMaker Magazine as among the “Top 25 Coolest Film Festivals in the World”.  More information about the Jerome Film Festival can be found at www.jeromefilmfestival.com.

Arcadia's Spiritline competed for the FIRST time in the AIA Regional Championships on

Saturday, Nov 14 at GCU

They took 8th place out of 13 teams and advanced to the State Championships on January 23 at GCU.

Way to go Spiritline!!
​
AND Spiritline is in their Second Competition this Saturday, November 21 at Estrella Foothills HS at 5:15 pm - Wear RED to Support Spiritline!!  #TitanPride

Congratulations to Arcadia English teacher Dave Peterson, chosen from the 9 Excellence in Education monthly award winning teachers, to receive a check for $999!  Mr. Peterson has been inspiring English students at Arcadia for 22 years! Read more here.

Three Arcadia Players were honored Monday night at the Scottsdale All-City Banquet. Third Baseman Josh Arndt, Short Stop Tony Sarno and Catcher Sam Huff received the award.
Several All-Time Season records were set this year and one was broken. Three Titans made the All-Time Batting list; Tony Sarno .476, Nick Dicarlo .475 and Josh Arndt .455. Tony Sarno made the All-Time Hits list with 50. And Josh Arndt broke Brendan Satran's All-Time Triples record with 7.
Congratulations Titans!

Arcadia high school students Allison Gooch, Jacob Staudenmaier and Dallas Greene were awarded special certificates of recognition issued by Arizona Secretary of State Michele Reagan in a special program at the State Capitol Museum on May 13. Arizona Supreme Court Vice Chief Justice John Pelander and State Librarian Joan Clark made the award presentation. The students were recognized based on their accomplishment in winning the American Bar Association's national contest with their video commemorating the 800th anniversary of the issuance of the Magna Carta. Following the award presentation the students participated in a panel discussion on the Magna Carta.