School
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Outreach into other Communities
Education
Observation Nights
Guest Speakers
Club Founder and President
Astronomy Unplugged
Along the same lines as education within my school, I extend my club's reach as Astronomy Program Director of INTERLACE (Intergenerational Learning Across Communities and Events). There, I bring a STEM perspective to the team and lead astronomy workshops with seniors at NOVELLE Senior Center and young students at Stratford Primary School.
Beyond guest speakers, Elizabeth, my vice president, and I bring run club meetings on topics members request. Most recently, members learned how refractor telescopes work by assembling Galileoscopes themselves.
Outside the club, I wrote Astronomy Unplugged, an introductory astronomy book, and have distributed more than 150 copies to young students, families, and senior centers. I wrote it to give people of any age a less intimidating way into astronomy, and a starting point for finding the parts of it they love. Watching kids excitedly ask their parents for a copy, and hearing seniors tell me how much they enjoyed it, showed me how anyone can find an interest in astronomy with the right first step!
Since 10th grade, I’ve led more than 10 solar and nighttime observing events, which I run with my vice president. For each event, I build an observing plan and guide the audience through it, introducing each object as we go: the Moon, Jupiter, Saturn, galaxies, nebulae, and star clusters. By day, we observe sunspots through a smart telescope and Galileoscope kits we built fitted with solar filters. I also recruit local amateur astronomers to bring their own telescopes to observation nights, so students can try many kinds of equipment. A highlight was catching Comet Lemmon (C/2025 A6) last year!
I have invited guest speakers to make astronomy more accessible to curious students.
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Dr. Frank Marchis - SETI research, the search for extraterrestrial life
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Dr. Tom Esposito - High-energy astrophysics
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Sean R. - History of the Lick Observatory
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Heather Hewitt - Exoplanet research and her educational journey
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Dr. Ariel Graykowski - Comet research with citizen science
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Dr. Lauren Sgro - Exoplanet research with citizen science
Senior Vice President
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Student Council
Being on student council for three years has taught me so much about leadership, communication, budgeting, and planning. Through my voice in student council, I work to represent my classmates, often talking to people to get feedback and relaying my peers' responses to teachers and our Dean of Students. I help create an inclusive and memorable experience, promote the performing arts and sports games, and plan dances.
Being a senior on student council also comes with new responsibilities, namely planning different senior year traditions including senior sunrise, parking lot painting, class jerseys.
Chinese Language Teachers Association of California (CLTAC) Chinese Speech Contest (2024 and 2025)
I wrote five-minute original speeches in Chinese and presented them at the annual CLTAC speech contest in 2024 and 2025.
Chinese is the language I share with my mom, the one that holds what English can’t translate. I work to keep it alive beyond my home, which motivated me to deliver my two original speeches: one on how clouds mirror human nature, and the other on living between two identities.
“被多种文化包围的我，是多么的幸运啊！”
How lucky am I, to be surrounded by so many cultures!
“如果我们多一份浪漫，将云彩和我们的情感做链接，就会发现云彩来来去去，不断变化，而我们的感情也是这样。每天只要我们睁开眼睛，都会意识到任何一种感情都不是永久的。不管你开心或者难过，这种情感都是短暂存在，它会随着周围条件的变化而变化。所以当你开心时，请记住这美好的瞬间；当你难过时，你要告诉自己一切都会过去。我想这也是云彩告诉我们的一个人生哲理。”
If we stop and take a moment to make a connection between ourselves and the clouds, we will realize that, like the fleeting and ever-changing nature of clouds, our emotions, too, are ephemeral. Every day when we open our eyes, we must accept that the emotions we are experiencing will not last forever. It doesn't matter if its joy or sadness, these emotions exist briefly and change based on our surroundings. So when you feel happy, remember that wonderful feeling; when you are sad, tell yourself that this too will pass. I think this is philosophy that clouds seek to tell us.