Thirteen of 24 seniors enrolled in the International Baccalaureate (IB) program at the district's Westchester Academy for International Studies (WAIS), a charter school, earned the prestigious IB Diploma this year, campus leaders announced recently.

Thirteen of 24 seniors enrolled in the International Baccalaureate (IB) program at Westchester Academy for International Studies (WAIS) earned the prestigious IB Diploma this year, school leaders announced recently.

The IB program is a rigorous course of study that rivals the much better known Advanced Placement program. The 13 diploma awards at WAIS add to the charter high school’s renown. Sixteen students won the highly regarded and world recognized diploma two years ago. This year, 46 seniors at the school are pursuing the two-year IB Diploma, the most ever.

WAIS is the district’s only charter middle and high school campus. SBISD also operates Cornerstone Academy, which is a highly rated charter middle school.

This summer, WAIS was rated an Exemplary middle and high school campus by the Texas Education Agency, and the school has applied for the nation’s highest ranking, Blue Ribbon School designation. Winning campuses nationwide are expected to be named by the U.S. Department of Education soon.

To earn the IB Diploma, students must devote their junior and senior years to the lengthy program, which requires English and a foreign language, math, science, social science and a fine arts class, plus a course called Theory of Knowledge. Students write a 4,000-word essay, give oral presentations and perform community service.

IB Diploma winners this year included two Bilingual award recipients, both of whom speak fluent Spanish. They are Tzitziki Robles, who will attend Brown University this fall, and Iliana Fisher, who will attend the University of Houston.

The 11 other IB Diploma graduates now entering colleges and universities are:

• Juan Avalos – Stanford University, Palo Alto, Calif.
• Nathan Balke – Southwest University
• Bryanna Banashefski – American University, Washington, D.C.
• Stacy Batres – Sam Houston State University
• Emily Bauer – Cornell University College of University, Ithaca, N.Y.
• Anna Cope – Texas A&M University
• Iliana Fischer – University of Houston
• Michelle Godoy – Baylor University
• Iman Kassir – Rice University
• Nayelli Martinez – University of Houston
• Jaclyn Nguyen – University of Texas at Austin
• Tzitziki Robles – Brown University, Providence, R.I.
• Georg Scherfler – Vienna University, Vienna, Austria

This year’s IB Diploma winners were led by IB Coordinator Valerie Harelson, a history teacher who has taught in Venezuela, Kuwait and South Korea. “We had another amazing year,” the coordinator said. “In 2008-2009, six students receive the full International Baccalaureate Diploma. Sixteen students reached this goal two years ago, and this year’s class worked really hard. We are proud of all of them and their achievements.”

Emily Bauer, who is off to Cornell to study engineering and future possibilities in chemistry, viewed the IB program as an easy choice after growing up in Singapore and then London.

“I was looking for something more than AP (Advanced Placement) where it’s all based on one big test at the end. I enjoyed the program and really did learn a lot,” Emily said. Being able to take additional chemistry helped her decide on IB, too.

Jaclyn Nguyen was looking for options to win admission to the University of Texas at Austin, where she will pursue interests in business management and premedical studies. Along the way, she earned a dollar-saving bonus – 24 hours of college credits. “I don’t need to sit in an English or Spanish class ever again,” she said.

“It was challenging and rigorous,” Stanford bound Juan Avalos said. “IB is not easy, but it is not as much pressure and stress as just one single AP test.”

Juan, who had seven years of Italian, passed both AP and IB-level examinations in his favorite Romance language. “I’m ready to try a new language,” he quips. Juan is one of this year’s Jesse H. Jones Scholarship recipients.

For more information on the IB program, visit the Westchester Academy website at http://www.springbranchisd.com/schools/allcampus/high/wais.htm.