Derek Park Fund Grant Winners Awarded

The Inaugural winners of the Derek Park Fund Grant for Creative Innovation were awarded in Tuesday's morning meeting. The presentation was made by St. Andrew's Episcopal School's Head of School, Robert Kosasky, on behalf of Derek's parents Chong and Marie Park, who were also in attendance. Awards were given to Allie Sklarew ’15, Ethan Lockshin ’14, Sean Hess ’14, Troy Dahlke and Charles James. Peter Donahoe '15 presented a donation to the fund in honor of his classmate.
Derek Park was a student at St. Andrew’s from sixth grade through the end of the first trimester of his ninth-grade year when he tragically died. At the time of his death, the Derek Park Fund was created to provide grants to students and faculty seeking creative innovation and personal development. Derek was a member of the Jazz Band (clarinet) and loved being out in nature playing, fishing, riding a bike or hiking. He was an imaginative and creative person who experimented freely with the physics in our world.

Sklarew is using her grant in conjunction with Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh. As a 2-year-old, Sklarew underwent a life-saving heart transplant at that hospital and she is currently an advocate for organ donation. She will use the money to buy art supplies for kids waiting in the hospital for transplants, to make crafts for the children, along with other SAES students, and she will donate a portion of the money toward research at the National Institutes of Health.

Lockshin and Hess currently oversee Lion Laborers. A large group of SAES students, they get together on weekends to help out the St. Andrew’s and Montgomery County community by doing odd jobs, such as leaf raking, tree trimming, office relocating, basement organizing, weeding, etc. They do the work for free and 100% of the donations they receive go to helping the Christ Roi school in Haiti, St. Andrew’s partner school. Lockshin and Hess will use their grant to buy lawn equipment such as rakes and leaf blowers, while also encouraging students at other schools to model Lion Laborers in their own community.

Dahlke, a philosophy and religion teacher, will use the grant to explore the Boundary Waters Canoe Area along the Canadian border in Northern Minnesota and do some fly fishing in 2013. This will be done with the intent of returning in the summer of 2014 with a group of St. Andrew’s students to canoe, camp, fish, and read books designed to enhance the and reflect on the experience.

James, a science teacher, will travel to England this summer to study the Design Technology Curriculum used in their schools and work to apply those practices at St. Andrew’s. Using ideas generated from his research, he will work with another department at St. Andrew’s to create a design-based project or create a grade level design challenge for the freshmen or sophomore class.
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St. Andrew’s Episcopal School is a private, coeducational college preparatory day school for students in preschool (Age 2) through grade 12, located in Potomac, Maryland.