Burnaby Mountain Secondary’s senior improv team is off to the Canadian Improv Games in Ottawa this month after capturing first place at the Lower Mainland Improv Games.
The team includes three Grade 12s, Noa Kozulin, Aeden Taylor and Emilia Michalowska, who helped Mountain win the junior Lower Mainland title as Grade 10s in 2014.
They are joined this year by three Grade 11s: Matthew Barreto, Alexander Glinnum and Alexa Binotto.
The team – coached by Mountain alum Kenneth Lai, who was on the school’s national silver medal winning team in 2011 – has big shoes to fill at the national competition March 23 to 26.
Mountain won gold at the nationals in 2008, silver in 2011 and bronze in 2006.
Student essay contest
The Burnaby Teachers’ Association (BTA) has announced its annual essay contest for Burnaby students.
The topic for the 2016 contest is climate change.
“I look forward to reading what our young people have to contribute to this important dialogue,” BTA second vice-president Leanne Sjodin said in a press release.
The top-two essays written by contestants in grades 11 and 12 will win prizes of $500 each, while winners in the grade-8-to-10 category will earn gift certificates.
Find entry forms for the contest online at www.burnabyteachers.com. The deadline for submission is March 31. Winning entries will be published online.
New professorships
Simon Fraser University has seven new Canada Research Chairs worth a total of $6.2 million over the next seven years.
The research professorships are funded by the Canada Research Chair Program to attract and retain world-class academic talent at Canadian universities to make Canada a leading country in research and development.
SFU’s Kelley Lee, who works in global health governance, and John McDonald, a cognitive neuroscientist, were awarded Tier 1 chairs worth $200,000 annually for seven years.
Tier 2 chairs worth $100,000 annually for five years went to Marlene Moretti in youth clinical psychology, Jiguo Cao in data science, Roger Linington in chemical biology, Stephanie Simmons in quantum nanoelectronics, and David Sivak in nonequilibrium statistical biophysics.
Moscrop mathletes shine
Moscrop Secondary was first in B.C. and fourth in the nation out of 631 schools in this year’s Canadian Senior Math Competition, organized by the University of Waterloo.
The only Canadian schools to beat them were special schools in Ontario for math and sciences with gifted programs, according to Moscrop math teacher Danny Young.
Moscrop’s top-five math competitors in the contest were Edward Jiang, Ivon Liu, James Jiang, Eric Wen and Jimmy Qi.
Moscrop’s junior competitors, meanwhile, placed fourth in B.C. and seventh in the country in Waterloo’s Canadian Intermediate Mathematics Contest for students in grades 8 to 10.
