MHS Students Earn Gold ACT-SO Awards
Five Milton Hershey School students recently captured Gold honors in the Greater Harrisburg Area National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s (NAACP) Afro-Academic, Cultural, Technological, and Scientific Olympics (ACT-SO).
Maame Afia Asante, Malina Gangadin, Nicole Heydemann, Thooria Olaoye, and Journey Wright will travel to Charlotte, North Carolina, this July to compete in the national competition.
Asante, an 11th grader, won in the engineering category. She used product design engineering and electrical engineering to create a turtle clock that would appeal to children of service members. Parents serving abroad can send a greeting to the clock via an app, allowing their children to hear their voice in the morning, even though they are many miles away. Asante said the design is an improvement upon a similar product she created in seventh grade.
“I wanted to upgrade it to something more meaningful to a specific group,” she said.
Asante also won a bronze medal in the contemporary dance category.
Wright’s personal approach to her work earned her a gold medal in the sculpture category. The 11th grader created a vase featuring Bantu knots, a protective hairstyle where sections of hair are twisted and wrapped around themselves. The piece combines her interests in art and personal grooming.
“I change up my hair and my appearance a lot,” she said.
Wright said she enjoys pottery because she can mold clay into anything she wants.
Gangadin, Heydemann, and Olaoye—members of the Class of 2025—co-authored a poem that allowed them to explore themselves and each other. The piece showcases how three friends with different cultural backgrounds share many similarities.
“Even though superficially we seem like completely different people in terms of race and standings within the school, we all deep down interweave and intertwine,” Gangadin said. “We decided the best way to express ourselves is through poetry.”
Each member of the trio has parents who were not born in America. They originally wrote the piece for a class and were encouraged by teacher Emily Gallo to enhance it for the ACT-SO competition.
“I honestly feel more included in a culture I originally felt like an outsider to,” Gangadin said.
Similarly, the project provided Heydemann with the opportunity to reflect upon her father’s German roots.
“It allowed me to explore if I should consider myself just simply American or if I should embrace this culture that is kind of foreign to me but also partly kind of my own,” she said.
While the three looked inward, they also looked outward to learn more about each other.
“We found pieces of ourselves and fragments of each other,” Gangadin said.
For Heydemann, the collaboration enhanced an already strong friendship.
“We also have places where we come together, where our thoughts meet, and our experiences are similar,” she said.
MHS students who won Silver Awards in the ACT-SO competition, are:
- A’Shawnte Johnson, poetry
- Zubayr Young, photography
- Jeremiah Victor, painting
- Chase Ingram, original essay
- John Ademuwagun, oratory
- Niles McCrory, filmmaking
- Mikyala Eslinger, dance modern
- Naomi Parker, drawing.
Students who won Bronze Awards, in addition to Asante, are:
- Princess Tommy, photography
- Naomi Parker, painting
- Joyce O’Goffa, dramatics
- Veyda Ramos, dance ballet