Graduation essayists announced
By MAUREEN DOHERTY
NORTH READING – The 68th Commencement Exercises of North Reading High School will be held on Friday, June 6 promptly at 6:15 p.m. at Arthur J. Kenney Field. All are welcome to attend the outdoor ceremony.
The graduating seniors will gather with their classmates in the gymnasium for photographs with their classmates prior to the processional with faculty members down Jon Bernard Way. They will be led onto the turf field by Class Marshals Ava Collins and Benjamin Cooper while the North Reading High School band plays “Pomp and Circumstance” under the direction of Ben Owens.
In the event of inclement weather, the ceremony will be moved indoors and attendance at the commencement will be limited to family and friends by ticket only, which were distributed to class members in advance. Parking is limited and carpooling is encouraged. Access to the high school lots ends at 6 p.m. The parking lot closest to the softball field is reserved for senior citizens and those requiring handicap parking or who need to be close to the direct access to the bleacher ramp.
GRADUATION ESSAYISTS
This year’s honor essayists are Sucheta Srikanth, Vanessa Steinmeyer and Aakash Stewart. The class essay will be delivered by Isabelle Lazure, whose essay was selected in a contest judged by the school’s faculty. All four essayists were inducted into the NRHS Chapter of the National Honor Society.
Honor Essayist Sucheta Srikanth
Sucheta Srikanth is the daughter of Sheela Sethuraman and Ayikudy Srikanth. She will attend Harvard College in the fall where she plans to pursue Cognitive Science, specializing in Data Science on the Mind, Brain, Behavior track. She aspires to attend graduate school and eventually conduct specialized research in her chosen field.
At NRHS, she was the founding co-president of the World of STEM club, which was created this year to foster STEM projects and compete at the Massachusetts Science and Engineering Fair. She is an avid writer and served as an editor for the school newspaper, the North Reading Buzz, publishing many articles and creating Man on the Street style videos dubbed “What’s Buzzin?” for a North Reading twist. Sucheta was also a student representative to the School Committee for the last three years. She was inducted into the National Honor Society.
Honor Essayist
In the community, Srikanth has participated and won awards in several robotics competitions as well as mentored a middle school robotics team affiliated with North Reading Robotics. She has worked the past two summers as a technology instructor at the Girls Inc. of Lynn, which inspired her to build CollegeCrafter, a platform to help students discover college majors and careers.
Sucheta is passionate about writing and her poems have won state and national awards including multiple Scholastic honorable mentions and Gold Key.
Srikanth was also named a 2024 Massachusetts State winner of the Aspirations in Computing High School award by the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT), which honors students for their computing-related achievements. She was the first place winner of the 2024 National Data Science Competition.
Suchi is an avid softball player and varsity lettered as a freshman catcher at NRHS. She has won several AAU championships with her team as well.
She will further her interest in data science this summer as an intern at Boston Children’s Hospital studying the incidence of congenital heart defects across demographics using data analytics and machine learning. The internship entails working with patient data that has been collected during an ongoing 10-year project.
Honor Essayist Vanessa Steinmeyer
Vanessa Steinmeyer is the daughter of Neil and Colleen Steinmeyer. She will attend UMass Amherst where she will major in civil and environmental engineering with the intention of completing a 4+1 master program in environmental engineering followed by serving in the Peace Corps for two years during which she hopes to focus on pollution remediation.
At NRHS she was active on the cross country and girls’ co-op ice hockey teams, earning eight varsity letters. She captained the cross country team as a senior and the team also won the Cape Ann League team sportsmanship award for the past two years.
Honor Essayist
She served as vice president of the World of STEM club. Vanessa and her teammates, Helena Brain and Quinlan Kelly, conducted a study of the potential environmental effects of winter roadway salt on the Ipswich River. They worked with the town’s DPW to conduct their research. The results revealed water quality better than they had anticipated. “It is all under the thresholds for organisms’ tolerance,” she said. Their project earned third place at the state competition as well as a “Taking the Pulse of the Planet” award from NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. She received recognition from the Association for Women Geoscientists, an international organization devoted to enhancing the quality and level of participation of women in geosciences and introducing girls and young women to geoscience careers.
She is passionate about art and served as Vice President of the high school’s newly formed National Art Honor Society. Steinmeyer also enjoyed volunteering each week in the Children’s Room at the Flint Memorial Library.
Honor Essayist Aakash Stewart
Aakash Stewart is the son of Usha Pillai and Brian Stewart. He will attend the University of Michigan. Although all freshmen enter the university without a declared major, Stewart intends to pursue a degree in chemistry with a goal of working in industry and pursuing a Ph.D. in either chemistry or physics.
At North Reading High School he played Ultimate Frisbee for four years, serving as captain for two years. He enjoyed the intramural nature of the co-ed club sport, which is inclusive and laid back, as well as the challenge of rebuilding the club’s number of participants.
Honor Essayist
For three years, Stewart was very active with the North Reading Youth Services mentor program. Through this program he mentored half a dozen students in grades 4-8 after school at the library, assisting with their homework and participating in fun and engaging activities with them.
As a senior he was a member of the Academic Decathlon Club and earned the top score at regionals and first place in science in his division.
Also at NRHS he was a founding co-president of the World of STEM club along with Srikanth. With the club, he completed a project measuring the effect that location and weather have on the air quality in North Reading. “For that project I won awards from NASA and NOAA,” he said. From NASA he was awarded a regional Earth Systems Science Award.
Class Essayist Isabelle Lazure
Class Essayist Isabelle Lazure is the daughter of Emily and Donald Lazure. She will attend Union College in Schenectady, N.Y. where she will also play soccer.
She is undecided about a specific major but has a strong interest in neuroscience.
At NRHS, she earned 11 varsity letters. She was a defender on the Hornet girls’ soccer team, which won the Cape Ann League title last fall, and she competed on both the indoor and outdoor track and field teams, serving as a track team captain during her senior year.
Class Essayist
Lazure was a three-year member of the Model UN, serving as vice president for one year. She was also a three-year member of SLAM (Student Leadership and Mentoring), and served as a board member this year.
As a member of the Student Council she was event chair for Kids Night Out. She also enjoys tutoring students through the NHS tutoring program, particularly in English and helping students create study plans for upcoming tests.
Lazure volunteers at the North Reading Food Pantry and has been actively involved with TOPSoccer for seven years, which is a youth soccer program that pairs students who have special needs with a soccer mentor on the field for recreational games. For the past two years she has served as an Outreach Ambassador for TOPS. “It is my biggest passion,” she said.