Ethel Walker School
January 17, 2020
On Wednesday, three students shared their junior projects with the Walker’s community. McKenzie Connors ’21, Kristen St. Louis ’21 and Tianyi Huang ’21 earned special recognition because their projects embodied many of the goals for the junior project program: an in-depth study of an area of interest outside of the classroom during the summer between sophomore and junior year.
McKenzie participated in a week-long marine biology camp called Project Oceanology and earned her boating license for her junior project. During the camp, she learned about many aspects of oceanology where she conducted marine research, collected different species of marine animals, explored different ecosystems and engineered a boat. For the second part of her project, she earned her boating license and helped captain a motorboat with her family and traveled through the Caribbean. McKenzie learned the basics of navigation, knotting, monitoring weather and how to respond to emergency situations such as managing eight to nine foot wave heights through stormy seas.
Kristen participated in a two-week program called A Million Lives in the Law at The School of The New York Times. She attended lectures and was introduced to legal professionals at the New York Appellate Court and American Civil Liberties Union as well as reporters at The New York Times. Kristen worked with a team and created presentations on mass incarceration in the United States as well as the conflict in Venezuela. In addition, Kristen attended law courses at the Cardozo School of Law. She developed an appreciation for litigation methods and briefing negotiation, and learned the basic aspects of the field of law.
Tianyi followed her passion for art and design and designed an architectural structure for a school for her junior project last summer. She traveled to Baolin where she volunteered at a primary school for a weeklong program. During her stay, there was so much rain that the children could not play outside. Tianyi went back to her father’s architecture company and started a project to design a shed that was light and simple and could be transported into the mountains. She researched the weather in Baolin and found that the most rainfall was May through August – half the school year. She then researched suitable material that would be transportable, detachable and cost-effective. In addition, Tianyi wanted the design to be simple, incorporate the culture of the people and blend in with the other buildings. She learned how to use Sketch Up and other CAD programs to design a structure and presented her final sketch to the architecture company.
All three students kept a daily journal and created a poster that was presented to the school community during the Poster Symposium in November. Another Symposium will be held in April. Learn more about the Junior Project Program at Walker’s.
