Darlington School is excited to announce the students who have been accepted into the Senior Ventures Program for the 2024-2025 school year.
Senior Ventures is a year-long senior project built on a framework of leadership, innovation, and community engagement. Most projects will fall into one of the following categories: Investigation, Performance, Entrepreneurship, and Outreach. Proposals that are interdisciplinary in scope with connections to professionals in the community are strongly encouraged. Each project is expected to have components of experiential learning, positive citizenship, and technology integration.
Please continue reading to learn more about the students and projects:
Student Name(s): Skai Albury
Project Title: The W.A.Y.S. Project (Why Aren’t You Smiling?)
Mentor(s): Heather Shores and Ladona Griffin
Project Summary: My Senior Ventures Project focuses on highlighting the importance of kindness in humanity. I plan to demonstrate this by hosting six activities/events in which the entire Darlington Community (both Pre-K to 8 and Upper School) can participate. My goal is to help the community and people around me through service and acts of kindness, which will ultimately put smiles on the faces of many.
Student Name(s): Ansel Enverga, Anna Nguyen, and Javin Pandya
Project Title: Robotics Outreach
Mentor(s): Owen Kinney and Zaine Cochran
Project Summary: We will strive to enhance programming and Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics in Education (S.T.E.M.) throughout the community as a way to help others and improve the outreach of Darlington’s Robotics Club, Team 4100. By the end of that year, we hope that the local elementary schools and organizations we work with will have the skills and experience required to start their own S.T.E.M. activities and clubs. We also hope to incorporate more tech activities at Darlington, such as “Appy Hour” as well as possible new ones.
Student Name(s): Mily James
Project Title: Art in Motion: Reconstructing the Arts at Dar
Mentor(s): Kim Tunnell and Lulie Ebaugh
Project Summary: My project aims to enhance the arts programming at Darlington in order to bring a new kind of motion to our community. By extending Fall for the Arts, connecting our program to the Rome community, and celebrating the arts in an even more interactive way, I hope to cultivate a growing enthusiasm for the arts at Darlington.
Student Name(s): Brecken Laliberte
Project Title: Learning Lacrosse
Mentor(s): Chris Eberhart and Katie Christian
Project Summary: The purpose of my Senior Ventures Project is to create an after-school lacrosse program run by players such as myself for students in grades 3-5. Overall, my goal is to help the communities of Darlington and larger Rome feel a sense of contentment and connectedness through the learning and playing of lacrosse.
Student Name(s): Aryan Kochar
Project Title: Fungi and Sustainable Management
Mentor(s): Barbara Kuckhoff
Project Summary: The creation of packing materials tends to be one of the world's threats leading to excessive plastic pollution. What if this problem can be solved? In this research project, I am going to highlight how specific strains of fungi are genetically modified in order to create sustainable packaging materials, which can be an alternative source of packaging materials. I am going to be working with the Green Team to portray this idea and spread knowledge.
Student Name(s): Atlas Kosedag and Charlie Patel
Project Title: Student Servant Leadership Team
Mentor(s): Heather Shores and Brant Evans
Project Summary: The goal of the Student Servant Leadership Team is to provide students with easy access to community service projects outside of as well as within Darlington. We will accomplish this by working with Ms. Shores and Mr. Evans to organize four major community service events for students to participate in throughout the year, as well as managing various smaller projects throughout the year. We will promote these projects on social media through a dedicated Instagram account, and overall make community service more accessible for all students at Darlington.
Student Name(s): Whit Molnar
Project Title: Baking for the Community
Mentor(s): Heather Shores and Kevin Dillmon
Project Summary: I will be working with and learning from the Rome-Floyd County Community Kitchen. I will take what I have learned about running a business and cooking in bulk and apply it to starting and running my own small business.
Student Name(s): Angeline Myrie
Project Title: Everything Law
Mentor(s): Melissa Smyly
Project Summary: My project aims to educate the community in the area of law through a variety of multimedia platforms, including videos, podcasts, and interviews with local legal professionals. By focusing on topics such as rights, legal processes, and career paths in law, my goal is to empower the Darlington and Rome community by helping give appropriate, easy-to-understand legal literacy and ultimately empower students with an interest in law to go into the field.
Student Name(s): Eddie Ye
Project Title: DEIJ-Darlington
Mentor(s): Tara Inman
Project Summary: My senior venture’s title is DEIJ-Darlington, which D refers to diversity, E refers to Equity, I refers to Inclusion, and J refers to Justice. I will highlight specific DEIJ events over five months: Black History Month, Hispanic Heritage Month, Native American Month, Asian-Culture Month, and Women's History Month. For each month, I will collaborate with clubs on campus such as the Black Student Union, Asian Student Union, etc., to organize some activities that benefit Darlington by building a more inclusive and equitable community where everyone shares, understands, and celebrates different cultures.
Through a proven self-guided exploratory process, seniors whose proposals are selected for the Senior Ventures program work independently to develop a project that’s interdisciplinary in scope and is connective, performance-based, investigative, or entrepreneurial. Click here to learn more.
