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School for Science and Math at Vanderbilt graduates new class

Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools has joined with the Vanderbilt Center for Nashville Studies and Peabody College to create a platform to provide detailed, reliable and recurring information about the commitment of major employers to the public school system. This is the latest installment in a series that tells the story of collaborative involvement between members of the Vanderbilt community and local public schools.

L-r: Chelsea Guo, Emma Bilbrey and Angela Eeds (Vanderbilt University)

Among those graduating May 10 from the School for Science and Math at Vanderbilt (SSMV) is Chelsea Guo. Valedictorian of the Hume-Fogg High School class of 2014, Guo plans to attend Yale University. Guo (left) is pictured in the SSMV classroom with Emma Bilbrey (center), also a Hume-Fogg senior, who plans to attend Wellesley College, and SSMV Director Angela Eeds (right).

A joint venture between Vanderbilt and Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools, the school each year offers up to 26 Metro high students a four-year, interdisciplinary, research-centered learning experience. During the school year, students attend classes on the Vanderbilt campus one day a week. During the summers, they spend six weeks on campus full-time in research settings. As rising seniors, they enter research laboratories where they work on independent projects at least one afternoon per week. Both Guo and Bilbrey said they will miss the small class size and one-on-one interaction with Vanderbilt scientists.

As a high school freshman, Guo was featured in a Vanderbilt View story about the Vanderbilt Center for Science Outreach. The School for Science and Math at Vanderbilt, founded in 2007, is one of the CSO’s programs, providing accepted students with university-level and sometimes graduate-level research experience. One of Guo’s research experiments focused on the topography of Mars.

Elizabeth Li (left) and Shu Zhang, 2014 graduates of SSMV and Martin Luther King Academic Magnet High School.