The William J. Sacco Critical Thinking Foundation held their annual awards banquet on Sunday, March 8, 2020 at Liberatore’s Ristorante in Bel Air and honored 13 students and 10 educators from 11 different Harford County High Schools.
More than 130 students, educators, school representatives and friends of the foundation gathered for the ninth annual banquet.
John Brownfield, from C. Milton Wright High School was named the Math Student of the Year.
Brownfield is ranked second in his class of 357 at C. Milton Wright with a GPA of 4.625. He received perfect scores on both the SAT (1600) and ACT (36). Brownfield has participated in the Maryland Math League and performed well enough to be included on the statewide leader board. He has also participated in the University of Maryland and Johns Hopkins Math Competitions. After high school, he plans to attend MIT for Mathematics.
The Math Educator of the Year, Cynthia Thompson, also comes from C. Milton Wright High School.
Thompson teaches grades 9 – 12 at C. Milton Wright in Intro to Algebra, Geometry, Honors Trigonometry, Pre-Calculus and AP Computer Science. She has gone beyond her duties of teaching mathematics by volunteering to take on teaching AP Computer Science as well as mentoring a student who is independently studying Differential Equations. Outside of the classroom, she has devoted much of her life to coaching soccer, basketball and lacrosse. She coached lacrosse at CMW for 10 years.
See below for a complete list of the 2020 winners.
STUDENTS
- Isaac Baccam (Patterson Mill High School)
- Mackenzie Bianchi (Harford Tech High School)
- John Brownfield (C. Milton Wright High School)
- Madison Buddenbohn (Edgewood High School)
- Casey Craig (Havre de Grace High School)
- Benjamin DeFord (Aberdeen High School)
- Jacob Huneke (North Harford High School)
- Jacob McElroy (Joppatowne High School)
- Salman Nasir (Science and Mathematics Academy)
- Heather Wheeler (Bel Air High School)
- Kathryn Yurechko (The John Carroll School)
EDUCATORS
- Susan Arena (Joppatowne High School)
- Joyce Boyd (Aberdeen High School)
- Amanda Fager (Patterson Mill High School)
- Kristin Harrell (North Harford High School)
- Ken Hutchinson (Havre de Grace High School)
- Erinn Izzo (Edgewood High School)
- Teresa Pleiss (The John Carroll School)
- Cynthia Thompson (C. Milton Wright High School)
- Jessica Wieber (Bel Air High School)
COMMUNITY AWARD
- Gianna Marzen (C. Milton Wright High School)
MIKE FRANKLIN COMPUTING AWARDS
- Student: Ethan Swain (Havre de Grace High School)
- Educator: Timothy Hitchcock (Havre de Grace High School)