IRHS Celebrates Excellence
Ironwood Ridge High School has a diverse multitude of high performing students, faculty and staff. This page seeks to recognize the accomplishments of IRHS community members on the community, regional, state, and national levels.
VETERAN'S HERTIAGE CLUB: Check out the new Veteran's Project website! The website was created by senior Jesse Wealing in the Ironwood Ridge Informational Technology Fundamentals class.
ENGLISH DEPARTMENT: Congratulations to English teachers Jenny Een and Marisu McNamara for being selected as Advanced Placement(AP)Test Readers. This June, approximately 12,000 college faculty and AP teachers from around the world will gather in Louisville, Kentucky; Kansas City, Missouri; Cincinnati, Ohio; and Salt Lake City, Utah,to evaluate and score about 18 million free-response answers. Our very own Ms. Een and Mrs. McNamara were selected to be a part of this process. Great job!
STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT: Senior Maggie Mang has just been awarded a $3,000 scholarship from the Arizona Veterans Hall of Fame Society. She will be honored in Phoenix at the Copper Sword Awards Gala on February 13, 2013 at the Mission Palms Hotel in Tempe. Maggie wrote an essay describing the impact of the Veteran's Heritage Project on her high school experience. It was inspiring and exceptionally well written. She is being recognized for her work in editing all 25 stories that our students have written. Additionally, this year, because of her publishing skills, our Chapter at IRHS is publishing our own volume of "Since You Asked."
We could not do this without Maggie's skill, drive, and discipline.
STUDENT ACTIVITIES/CLUBS: Club Green recently donated a 120 gallon coral reef tank and set it up in the library. Once the tank balances itself after a week or so, it will get its first inhabitants.
CTE CTSO: The Ironwood Ridge SMART Team (Students Modeling a Research Topic) is working with Dr. Katie White of Ventana Medical Systems and the Center for Biomolecular Modeling at the Milwaukee School of Engineering to develop models of the structure/function relationship for two different proteins and their associated substrates. The students are scheduled to present their work at Science City as part of this year’s Tucson Festival of Books and they will also present at the National Smart Team conference.
CTE DEPARTMENT: The Biotech II students are completing a DNA Barcoding Project in association with the Northwest Association for Biomedical Research and were praised by Dina Kovarik, saying,“I am SO IMPRESSED with the sequence data from Maddie, Lauren, Camille, Shawn, and Desi! This is hands down, without a doubt the best set of DNA sequence data that I have seen from any of the students working on this project in the past 3 years. Not only is the quality of the data outstanding, but the number of successful sequencing reactions is also the highest that I’ve seen. I haven’t performed any of the bioinformatics analyses on these, so…I’ll leave that up to the group! I don’t know what all of you are doing down in Arizona, but you sure are doing it right.”
FINE ARTS/CTE DEPARTMENTS: Our Drama and Culinary Arts programs recently teamed up to produce their 3rd dinner theatre this year. A Christmas Carol was presented for two days in the IRHS Student Union over a delicious three course dinner.
ATHLETICS: The Football team brought home their first State championship title.
STUDENT ACTIVITIES/CLUBS: Student Governament had a month of community service in November. They donated 9,500 pounds of food to Interfaith Community Services (via the Edward Jones Bag-a-Thon). They spent 4 hours at the VA hospital collecting food and compiling Thanksgiving Day boxes for PioDecimoin South Tucson. They also collected 91 pints of blood in our blood drive to help the Tucson Community!
CTE CTSO: HOSA sent 15 students to the Fall Leadership Conference in Phoenix in November. Students were able to experience using medical simulators to learn practice intubations and other medical training techniques, participate in health career discussions with a wide variety of health professionals, and take part in a wide variety of leadership activities.
ATHLETICS: The women's volleyball team recently won their sixth consecutive region championship and advanced to the State Semi-Finals for the fifth time in six years. Sophomore Aunesty Jantz was named the Division II Player of the Year.
ATHLETICS: The varsity cheerleaders participated in a community event. They were invited to cheer on the 5 and 10 mile racers at the Everyone Runs race at Catalina State Park. The girls enjoyed cheering on the runners as they approached the half way mark and as they crossed the finishline.
STUDENT ACTIVITIES/CLUBS: The Veterans Heritage Project hosted its Second Annual Veteran Assembly honoring IRHS teacher and staff veterans: Jim Ewing, Ken George, Mark Hodge, Glen Linton, and “Rocky” Zanes. Additionally, staff members with relatives serving in the Armed Forces were honored. The assembly conducted by Vice-President, Molly Hansen, featured special recognition of World War II veteran, Charles Burden, grandfather to math teacher, Sean Watkins. The emotional story ofhis service was greeted with a standing ovation by IRHS students, who had filled the auditorium to capacity. Retired Air Force Major Ken George, IRHS math teacher, gave the keynote address reviewing his military service.
STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT: Two IRHS seniors, Molly Hansen and Maggie Mang were featured speakers at the Sun City, Oro Valley Veterans Day Celebration. Along with Oro Valley Mayor, Satish Hiremath, Molly and Maggie delivered a message of tribute to the crowdof approximately200 veterans. They shared their experiences in interviewing veterans, sending their stories to the Library of Congress, and publishing their stories in “SinceYou Asked”. Both received high accolades for their remarks and work to preserve veteran stories.
STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT: Tara Peck (1st piece) and Gabriel Dooling (2nd piece) had their work recognized recently in the Spectrum Printing Calendar Competition. They were two of 12 artists recognized from over 100 submissions! Congratulations go out to these two fantastic artists.
SCIENCE DEPARTMENT: AP Chemistry and Integrated Science joined lab classes. Together they completed cross–curricular science lab activities that included Chemistry standards and Biology standards. Some of thea ctivities included: Fog Fruit Punch and a detailed explanation of how “Dry Ice” works (AP Chemistry; Student Demo). The Puking Pumpkin. Chemistry chemical reactions(AP Chemistry; StudentDemo) Vampire Bats(5minute DVD). Discovery Table activities and Conservation issues (Int.Science StudentActivity) The White Nose Syndrome of the seriously endangered Gray Bat of North America. –Relevant science news this month.(5 minute newscast) All students had anopportunity tocomplete science writing activities about Bats. It was wonderful to observe these two student populations working together, sharing scienceandhuman interactionexperiences.
CTE DEPARTMENT: Chef Gowen and Advanced Culinary Arts class worked on the finer points of making sushi in class. The class did a masterful job of creating wonderful selections.
2012-13 Celebrating Excellence
2011-12 Celebrating Excellence
2010-11 Celebrating Excellence
Check back regularly for updates of recent accomplishments. To report accomplishments please contact A.J. Malis at amalis@amphi.com. Pictures are welcome and encouraged.
