NEWS

MYERS ROMIG RYAN SALAZAR

A Matter OF MERIT

Congratulations to seniors ISABEL BATTISTA, ASHLEY MYERS, LAURA ROMIG, HARLEY RYAN and ANTHONY SALAZAR, who have been named National Merit Finalists based on their performance on the PSAT. The distinction places them among the top 15,000 of the 1.5 million students who entered the 2021 competition.

GET UP AND DANCE

There’s no doubting the healing power of dance—or, in the case of the Miracle Network Dance Marathon, its fundraising potential. In January, the Pace Miracle Knights team, led by senior SYDNEY SILVERSTEIN, pulled off an all-day dance party to support Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta (CHOA), a Children’s Miracle Network hospital. The event was the culmination of months of hard work during which the team raised money and awareness for CHOA’s life-saving mission.

“CHOA has always held special meaning for my family and me,” Silverstein says. “The hospital saved my sister’s life when she was born, and I wanted to give back. I hope that the Miracle Knights will continue to grow and become a program that all Pace students want to join.” This year’s Miracle Knights team generated $33,505 for CHOA and is the only high-school group in the history of the Georgia program to surpass $20,000.

ONE-OF-A-KIND

MARTHA LEE THWAITE ’80 and PASCALE BIENNE’s second graders are now award-winning authors. Students wrote and illustrated One of a Kind, a book in which each child authored a page about what makes them special. Studentreasures Publishing selected One of a Kind as a winner in its 2020–2021 $100 grant giveaway.

Each year, the Professional Association of Georgia Educators Foundation, the Georgia Chamber of Commerce and the Georgia Department of Education partner to present the STAR (Student Teacher Achievement Recognition) program. The program requires that nominees achieve the top SAT score on a single test date and be in the top 10 percent of their class. STAR Students then choose a STAR Teacher who has inspired them to strive for excellence.

Senior LAURA ROMIG was named Pace’s 2021 STAR Student and selected Upper School English teacher EMILY WASHBURN as her STAR Teacher. A master of the written word, Romig’s short stories, poetry and flash fiction have earned praise at Pace and beyond. The Scholastic Art & Writing Awards recognized her with a National Gold Medal in 2020, and she was one of five Regional American Voices Nominees in the short story category. As co-editor of Knight Gallery, the Upper School literary magazine, Romig lends her critical eye and wordsmithing wizardry to her fellow students’ work. She also serves as a staff writer for VOX ATL and is working on a novel.

When she’s not writing, Romig helps lead the Pace Academy Community Engagement Board, volunteers with Books for Africa and Upchieve, plays principal viola in the orchestra and serves as treasurer for the Class of 2021. This past fall, she helped the varsity girls cross-country team bring home a state title—and she led the track team to a second-place finish at the state meet this spring.

WASHBURN

Campaigning to CURE CANCER

Pace teams raise more than $400,000 for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society

The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s (LLS) annual Students of the Year program brings together exemplary high schoolers to raise funds for LLS while developing entrepreneurship, marketing and project management skills. Two groups of Pace students participated in the 2021 program and, out of 33 teams, placed first and second in terms of dollars raised.

“I decided to participate in this year’s contest in honor of my dad, EVAN APPEL, a breast cancer survivor,” says junior CARLY APPEL who, along with junior COURTNEY KAHN and sophomore BARRI SEITZ, led team Secure the Cure 2.0 to victory. “Through the program, I wanted to communicate the importance of serving the community and to learn valuable skills in leadership, business development and research—but most of all, I want to be a part of the last generation to see cancer.”

For seven weeks, students worked to raise funds, gain corporate sponsorships and increase awareness of the work of LLS, and when all was said and done,

Secure the Cure 2.0 generated $233,707 to support cancer patients and life-saving research.

“We were so excited to win first place, but even more thrilled to know that CARTER FREUDENSTEIN and

IAN DEMPSEY came in right behind us,” says Kahn. The sophomore team, The Answer for Cancer, brought the Pace teams’ total contributions to LLS to more than $400,000. “I hope that our participation in Students of the Year communicates that teens are just as capable as others when it comes to successfully fundraising and raising awareness,” Seitz says.