Highlights of his visit in the 2 1/2-minute video below.

Cora Ormseth

Cora, who will deliver the Valedictory Address at AHS commencement ceremonies to be held at Santa Anita Park on Friday, June 11, was selected by a committee of faculty members and students from a group of 30 Salutatorians, all of whom rank academically at the very top of the graduating class of over 950 students.

Cora will be attending Yale University next year and hopes to one day become a pediatrician.

During her four years at AHS, Cora has earned a perfect 4.0 grade point average while taking an extremely rigorous schedule of classes, including honors and Advanced Placement courses in English, mathematics, history, science, and world languages.

Besides being a tremendous student academically, Cora is extremely well-rounded. She is a two-sport varsity athlete and serves as Team Captain for the Girls’ Cross Country Team. She is the Opinion Editor for the Apache Pow Wow school newspaper and is involved in numerous other clubs and organizations on campus.

Off campus, Cora participates in the Bridging Communities Program, a program linking Japanese American and Muslim American youth, and volunteers at the Huntington Gardens.

During her four years at Arcadia High School, Cora has been honored as a Rotary Student of the Month for Academics, an MVP for the Cross Country team, and a recipient of the Stan Chambers Journalism Award.  Cora is also a National Merit Scholarship finalist and scholarship recipient.

• Timothy Lee’s outstanding performance on the National Chemistry Olympiad Exam qualifies him to be one of the top twenty students in the nation to be part of the U.S. Chemistry Olympiad Team.
  Timothy will be going to Chemistry Camp at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado where the U.S. Chemistry Olympiad Team will be trained by chemistry professors in preparation for the International Chemistry Olympiad Competition.
  This is the fifth time in the past eight years that an AHS student has made it to the top twenty in the nation on the National Chemistry Olympiad Competition.
  Congratulations to Timothy and coach, Cherryl Mynster.

• Congratulations to the Boys Varsity and JV Tennis teams for winning the Pacific League Championship. The Boys Varsity team is currently ranked # 7 in the CIF.
  They open up CIF competition at home on Wednesday the 12th of May.
  Congratulations to singles players Travis Tu and Albert Chen for earning All League Honors at the Pacific League Individual Tournament. Special congratulations to George Chiu and Hardy Lou for winning the Pacific League Doubles Championship and earning All CIF honors.  Coach Dohling

• The AHS Physics Team competed in this year’s Physics Bowl for the first time ever.  This competition is unlike the other academic competitions, because there are no regional competitions with head to head match ups.
  The Physics Bowl competition is a challenging test which is given nationwide and was proctored by the schools own teachers.
  They placed 2nd in the State and 8th in the Nation.
  The AHS Physics Team is a new academic team started this year by Vincent Li and Daniel Liem. Additional members of the team are Ben Li, Brian Ho, Carolyn Li, Carpus Tin, Chengxin Chen, Danny Yang, Elmer Yang, Gregory Chang, Jacqueline Xu, Jason Jong, Jason Pang, Jeffrey Ouyang, Jessica Liang, Jon Ma, Kevin Tsai, Qiwang Zhang, Rock Liu, Shannon Hsu, Shibo Zhong, Timothy Young, and Yuheng Liu. Congratulations to the Physics Team and their advisors/teachers Mauricio Eguez and Shenyang Zhang.

• On another note of hooray for our students, Kevin Wang (class of 2006) was elected to Phi Beta Kappa as he graduates from Georgetown University this month.

• Jason Barclay, Social Science Teacher, has been accepted into a Fellowship in Washington D.C. this year.
  Twenty teachers were selected from 20 states to travel to Washington D.C.  from July 6-10, 2010 for scholarly lectures, discussions, and tours of historic sites.
  The goal of this Fellowship is a deepening understanding and appreciation of the American Founding by its participants.  Congratulations, Jason.

• The Varsity Boys Golf Team advanced to CIF Southern Section Finals last night, falling just one stroke short of being named the Northern CIF Division Champs!
  Although we shot our third worst score of the season we still qualified for the finals which are this Thursday at Red Hawk Golf Club.
  This team ruled the San Gabriel Valley again this year and now has a chance to represent the Apache Nation against equally great golf programs like La Quinta, Sunny Hills, Corona Del Mar, and Mira Costa.
  The team members are Eric Yin, Max Reiske, Richard Jeong, Clayton Ojeda, Jonathon Lai, Anthony Pidaloan Congratulations to both the students and their coaches Robbie Greep and Brent Reiske

• Jimmy Chu, a 2001 AHS Alternative Program graduate who went to Mt. Sac and then to UCLA, is graduating from the UC Berkeley School of Law this Friday, May 14, 2010.  Jimmy had problems at AHS and for a time was even in juvenile detention, what a success story for Jimmy!!

Coach and AHS chemistry teacher Cherryl Mynster said the competition was full of intense matches with lightning speed buzzing that spanned from 10 a.m. – 11 p.m.
“The team had an outstanding performance in a string of undefeated rounds in the round-robin throughout the day, challenging double-elimination matches the rest of the evening!

“Overall, the competition was tough and filled with powerhouse schools, many of which are magnet schools as well as returning participants at nationals. In the end it came down to a close match with Mira Loma (last year’s first-place team with returning members) which resulted in us placing 4th.

“Please congratulate the following Science Bowl members for their AMAZING, AWESOME performance: Captain Eddie Xue, Jason Jong, Alex Wang, Derek Chou and Sam Zeng.

“They represented Arcadia High School well and have given Arcadia High School a reputation for being a new powerhouse!

“At the awards ceremony we were honored with the presence of First Lady Michelle Obama and Department of Energy Secretary and Nobel Laureate Steven Chu. We shook hands with both and the team received a trophy, $1000 towards Science Bowl, and Texas Instruments graphing calculators.