Students Sparkle at GIMS Night Presentation

High School Gifted Program produces exciting projects

When students are given the freedom to choose an academic project without any limitations beyond their own interests, the results can be diverse and exciting. On Monday May 19, 2008 the Lisle High School Gifted Independent Mentored Study (GIMS) program participants had five minutes to give an overview of their semester projects.

Nanoscale Catalysts Project

Each student had complete liberty to select an area of interest to them and then design a project that would allow them to explore that interest. Experts in the various areas were then placed with the students to serve as mentors. Below are the students, their project titles, and the mentors that worked with them.

Student	Project	Mentor
Adam Carlson	“Catalysts of Change: Moments in History”	Bruce Howell
Megan Hannan	“Fashion Design”	Kim Mack
Margaret Palicka	“Depression”	Gigi Palicka
Nicole Phelps	“Spiritual and Alternative Healing”
Joey Blunk	“Tenor Madness”	Scott Gumina
Ryan Donahue	“A Conceptual Analysis of the *U.S. vs. Tony Rezko*”	Brett Lauten
Evan Huddleston	“Robot Combat”	Brian Swartz
Claudia Galvez	“Bridges: a Photographic Perspective”	John Mueller
Emilie Modaff	“Yoga: Steps to a Healthier Life Style”	William Kruthers
Aaron Schmitt	“A Revolution in Animation”	Chad Voss
Shepherd Smith	“The Movie Making Process”	Bruce Howell
Viktor Vajda	“Nanoscale Catalyst”	Stefan Vajda
Henry Yan	“My Eastern Roots”	Jinan Yan
Alexandra Zubenko	“Stem Cell Research”	Mark LaScala

Photography Project

This is the fourth year for the GIMS program and the number of students that have participated in the program has grown each year. GIMS coordinator Bruce Howell says that the work that the students do is doubly impressive to him first because of the quality of the projects that are produced and secondly because this is a voluntary program. "These are students that are offered an opportunity to do extra work and they gladly take up that challenge. That shows me that these are people that have a real thirst for knowledge and don't shy away from hard work."