Wheeling Park High School junior Grant Kenamond is on an exceptional winning streak.
Kenamond recently qualified for the national-level exams of two academic Olympiads. First, he competed in the Open Round of the North American Computational Linguistics Open (NACLO) competition, a contest in which students solve problems in linguistics and computational linguistics. He placed 115th in the U.S. and Anglophone Canada and earned the opportunity to compete at the Invitational Round at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU).
More recently, Kenamond was one of 10 students in the Pittsburgh Section of the American Chemical Society to qualify for the National Chemistry Olympiad Exam. Kenamond said the National Exam, which was held at CMU on April 23, involved three parts, and it took about six hours to complete.
“It was a difficult competition for sure,” he said. “There were free response questions, and there was also a laboratory portion. You were given chemicals and certain materials, and you had to find, for instance, the molar mass of a substance. Or, you had to find the Ka [acid dissociation constant] value for an acid. It was very challenging.” However, Kenamond noted that he felt well prepared thanks to the instruction he has received from his chemistry teacher, Courtney Redilla.
Kenamond has also earned a spot on a team of 15 students that will represent West Virginia at the American Regions Mathematics League (ARML) at Penn State in June after placing second in grades 10-12 in the West Virginia Math Field Day competition at Shepherd University. He was also named the Most Beneficial Team Member at the state competition.
Moreover, Kenamond has been invited to take part in “the educational experience of a lifetime” by being selected to the Summer Science Program, a research program that accepted only 204 of more than 2,600 applicants this year. He will be doing biochemistry research at the program’s Purdue University location from June 18 to July 26.
The Summer Science Program offers teens an exhilarating and inspiring immersion into hands-on experimental science. Working in teams of three, 36 participants and seven faculty form a supportive “living and learning community” over 39 days. Each team completes a real research project, taking and analyzing original data. Afterward, they join a worldwide network of approximately 2,500 alumni of all ages.
“I’m very excited about it,” Kenamond said. “The research is going to make me comfortable and prepare me for the research that I’m going to do in college.”
Kenamond said he is looking forward to his senior year as a Patriot. He plans to take additional AP courses, and he is excited to apply to engineering programs at various universities. He said he is considering studying chemical engineering.
Kenamond said he’s enjoyed the opportunities made available to him at Park, and he commended the school’s outstanding teachers.
“There are a lot of excellent teachers,” he said. “You get out what you put into it. There are great opportunities here for students who want to succeed. I’m very grateful to all my teachers who have helped me. Wheeling Park is a great school for anyone willing to push themselves to succeed.”
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