TOHS grads of advanced program are set to conquer the world




ABOVE AND BEYOND—Kamila Zakowicz, left, Tyus Liu and Sami Johnson are members of the TOHS Class of 2018 and graduates of the school’s Center for Advanced Research and Studies.

ABOVE AND BEYOND—Kamila Zakowicz, left, Tyus Liu and Sami Johnson are members of the TOHS Class of 2018 and graduates of the school’s Center for Advanced Research and Studies.

At Thousand Oaks High School, it’s the center for inquisitive minds. It’s the center for possibilities, the center for process versus outcomes. It’s the Center for Advanced Studies and Research.

The center is a program for high-achieving students for whom the normal AP and honors courses aren’t challenge enough. It offers the opportunity to engage in disciplined and scholarly research through college-level courses.

“Our students are doing amazing stuff,” said Tasha Beaudoin, who oversees the center. “Our students do research on campus in our engineering and research lab, where we have experts come in, but they also are doing research at Cal Tech, UCLA, Cal State Channel Islands, CLU.”

Incoming Lancers must decide early on whether they want to apply for the three-year program. The application process is rigorous and begins in the first semester.

Once accepted, students must take AP classes, and they begin with the AP Capstone, which teaches the foundations of research and literature review. From there, they form ideas for their projects.

“We go, ‘OK, you’re interested in physics? We’ll bring someone in for that project,’” Beaudoin said. “As long as we have the resources and they have an academic mentor who is capable of handling their project, usually a Ph.D., and the project passes through standards of scientific review or institutional review, they’re good to go.”

These aren’t their parents’ high school science fair projects. In fact, they’re not science fair projects at all. The center stopped sending projects to the county competition because the work they produce is advanced well beyond what is generally seen there.

Now in its third year, the center’s seniors are developing projects, with names that are nearly unpronounceable for the layperson, that are being published in respected journals.

This year, Jack Adams produced research on the effects of photosynthesis on Martian atmospheric composition in a closed system. Ethan Feild studied the effects of glyphosate on the growth and viability of azotobacter vinelandii. Riley Harris analyzed recalled music and “earworm applications and implications.”

Sami Johnson, who will attend Carnegie Mellon in the fall, chose research that could have implications for Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases.

Her research is being published in the American International Journal of Biology.

The intensity of the program does come at a price, however.

“It’s not all sunshine and roses,” Beaudoin said. “These kids are exhausted. They’re in band and in dance and they want to be valedictorian. They’re committed as any kid can be.”

That’s why the faculty gives the students the freedom to study something they have a passion for.

It’s also why results are not what’s important; it’s the process, the experience.

Even so, the results are pretty amazing if college acceptance is any indication.

This year’s senior class is heading to Berkeley, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, NYU, the United States Air Force Academy, Yale and everywhere in between.