What's Happening Around Campus

List of 20 news stories.

  • The Ripple Effect of Mentorship


    At College Prep, learning is a lifelong journey—an undertaking that extends to everyone in our community. Teachers and mentors are dedicated to ongoing development, modeling a commitment to learning and growth. This attitude reflects the same core values that define our educational approach—it is intentional, relational, and growth-oriented. College Prep’s classroom culture is not just about academic excellence; it is about blending support, high expectations, and personal connection for students and faculty alike. This ethos is grounded in the “warm demander” approach, a philosophy that combines high expectations with deep care. Teachers challenge students to grow through steady guidance, and they experience that same model at the professional level as mentors and mentees. This balance of compassion and accountability informs, in particular, how new teachers are welcomed, coached, and invited to both develop and fine tune their individual styles at Prep. In this way, professional mentorship in the College Prep community fosters a culture of reflective, intentional practice with scaffolded support and collaboration.

    For science teacher Dr. Eva Campodonico ’95, mentorship at College Prep is a throughline.
    Thinking back on her high school days, Eva still remembers a pivotal conversation with her AP biology teacher, Dr. Sharona Barzilay. Sharona shared how she left the college teaching environment for high school education. “It was a quiet but powerful case to prioritize meaning over prestige,” Eva reflects. This resonant message profoundly shaped Eva’s aspirations and inspired her to seek knowledge through a humanistic approach to teaching and learning. 

    Years later, when College Prep was celebrating its 50th anniversary, Eva reached out to Sharona, then the Assistant Head of School. Eva was deep into her postdoctoral work in Microbiology and sought advice from her former mentor as she contemplated her next career move. Sharona remembered Eva well, even fifteen years later, and connected her with Biology teacher Bernie Shellem. He invited Eva back to campus as a guest speaker to share her experience in academic research with current students. Not long after that visit, a science teaching position opened. Eva’s experience and approach aligned beautifully with the School’s vision. She joined Sharona and Bernie in the Science department in 2011, along with fellow alum Jeff Sensabaugh ’87, as a full time faculty member. 

    Sharona was an inspiring teacher and generous as a mentor. She continued to support Eva through her early years as a high school teacher, particularly as Eva developed a new course: the now much-loved STEM seminar where students complete internships in research labs. When Eva had to make difficult decisions about the STEM program Sharona helped Eva align her curriculum with the school’s mission, demonstrating the integrity of principled action. Those moments taught Eva that hard decisions, thoughtfully made, could be both painful and principled. Eva now shares these lessons, guiding younger teachers to connect their choices to core values and to approach challenges with confidence.

    Now 14 years into teaching, Eva embodies this ethos as a mentor in her own right. Eva first met Dr. Cameron Exner in a UC Berkeley lab when a College Prep STEM student for a summer internship. Seeing the potential and talent in that student sparked Cameron’s interest in teaching high school science. Cameron joined the College Prep faculty in 2022 and she currently leads the STEM seminar Eva started. Eva supports Cameron in the same way Sharona once supported her, a continuation in this meaningful cycle of mentorship and growth. 
     
    Mentorship at College Prep is not top-down or prescriptive: it’s a way of being in relationship. When recruiting nationally for top talent, the School seeks student-centered teachers who are eager to develop their practices and engaging adolescents in deep explorations of learning. This dynamic set of core values keeps faculty energized and students equipped for an ever-changing world.

    Integral to College Prep’s mentoring approach is the multi-layered system led by our department heads. Dean of Faculty Johanna Lanner-Cusin ‘99 tailors this framework to each teacher’s unique path. Department heads, who are charged with pedagogical leadership and directly involved in hiring, serve as primary mentors to new teachers. To ensure that they are guiding the newest teachers effectively and thoughtfully, all department heads meet as a group twice monthly to reflect, share feedback strategies, and tackle pedagogical questions. The goal of this practice is to foster a collaborative approach and identify best practices that, in turn, engage students in caring and dynamic classrooms.

    Long before joining the School, new faculty have participated in an extensive search and interview process designed to set them up for success. From interviews, review of professional materials, to live demo lessons on campus, the Dean of Faculty and department heads carefully consider each candidate, always with the student experience in mind. New teachers then step in to a mentorship structure that models the personalized and inquiry-lead approach that our students experience. 
     
    Observation and feedback is a key component in College Prep’s reciprocal mentorship mosaic. Both the Dean of Faculty and department heads formally observe new teachers in their classrooms, and peers from outside of their department offer additional perspectives. New teachers also have the opportunity to observe colleagues teach both within and outside of their departments to see how their curriculum fits into the larger student experience. These visits help new teachers gain a fuller sense of the daily student experience and encounter varied instructional styles. Classroom visits are designed to drive dialogue about teaching practices and their impact. Crucially, new teachers are never left in instructional silos; each teacher joins at least one teaching team, which offers pedagogical collaboration and idea-sharing. 

    As a former classroom teacher and volleyball coach, Dean of Faculty Lanner-Cusin ‘99 describes her role as a “captain-coach” of the mentoring team, leading in a way that prioritizes open and continued dialogue to unify the process. This inquiry-based approach—the very same that is fostered in our students—emphasizes mentorship grounded in sincere connection.

    This synergy extends from faculty mentors to faculty-student relationships. Like our students, teachers who are talented, flexible, and willing to lean into uncertainty, thrive at College Prep. Eva’s journey—from being a student of Sharona’s to now mentoring the next generation of teachers—is a powerful testament to how mentorship at College Prep transcends a work relationship to become a living legacy. With the ‘warm demander’ approach and a universal belief in the power of education, College Prep’s intentional structures foster a powerful relational culture that shapes both teachers and the students they guide.

  • 2025 NAIS Student Civic Leadership Summit in Washington, DC


    In February, four of our students attended the 2025 NAIS Student Civic Leadership Summit in Washington, DC. They joined high school students from across the country to explore civic engagement and leadership. Our four students were selected to attend the conference because they show exemplary student leadership on campus. Two of them are elected co-leaders of the Equity Roundtable, which is composed of the leaders of our Affinity- and Identity-based student clubs. These student leaders facilitate Equity Roundtable meetings and advocate for the needs and concerns of affinity leaders on our student council. The other two students are co-leads of our school’s Coalition for Coexistence, a joint group of members from our Muslim Student Alliance and our Jewish Student Union dedicated to telling stories to build understanding of our community’s relationship with Israel and Palestine. The Student Civic Leadership Summit was an energizing opportunity for our students to continue to build their leadership skills.

    Hosted in partnership with the Close Up Foundation, the summit challenged students to analyze pressing national issues—such as climate change, poverty, and mental health—through expert discussions and collaborative problem-solving. Our students chose to participate in workshops on poverty, deliberating on the barriers to change, and working in groups to develop action plans to bring back to our school community to address this challenge. When they returned to Oakland, the four students presented their ideas to our faculty and shared strategies for making a meaningful impact at College Prep and the broader Oakland community. The experience deepened their understanding of civic responsibility and equipped them with tools to bring their insights back to our school community.

    The students shared that, “We feel inspired by the work and felt a rush of hope and determination overcome us. We truly felt that we can create our own change, giving us a belief for a better future regardless of what's currently happening. We came back from the conference and got straight to work.”

  • Global Fair


    This year the annual Global Faire, an event that celebrates the languages and cultures of the world, highlighted the history, culture, music, dance, and perspectives of The Islands of Oceania. Thank you to the World Language Department, and all of the students, clubs, parents, and guests who shared the cultures, histories, languages, music, and dance of this region with us!

  • STEMposium


    Students in our applied studies STEM seminar present their summer internship research. The research seminar in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math is a year long class that centers on a summer internship. Last spring, students learned how to read primary scientific literature, analyze and critique raw data, and work on a research team. This summer, they were matched with research mentors and completed a full-time, six-week long internship. This fall, they synthesized their findings, prepared a poster about their summer research and deliver a formal scientific talk.
    Their topics include:
    • Characterizing gene regulatory networks driving jaw evolution
    • Using spatial transcriptomics to dissect neural tissue function
    • Investigating host-pathogen interactions of HIV
    • Assessing the impact of parental age on offspring physiology
    • Developing methods for muscle research using machine learning
    • Elucidating the neurological functions of novel obesity regulators
    • Modeling properties of Mott insulators under different dilution conditions
    • Discovering mechanisms of epigenetic mark spreading in eukaryotic cells
    • Establishing and implementing policies to protect patient data in FemTech
    • Optimization of high-efficiency lipid nanoparticles for drug delivery

  • Beyond Ballots, Exploring Questions of Civic Engagement and Political Discourse


    We are excited to use this fall’s election season as a laboratory to consider broad questions of civic engagement and political discourse. As part of our Common Classroom offerings called “Beyond Ballots” which focuses not only on the upcoming election, but also more broadly on civic health. In early September former History Teacher Steve Wilson led a discussion titled The Twisted Path to the White House: The Electoral College and You. Students and faculty filled the Buttner auditorium and explored why the founders put the Electoral College in the Constitution, how it works, how it changes our politics, and what it all may mean for the 2024 election.
     
    We also welcomed guest speaker Amy Larsen, Director of Global Field Engagement and Strategic Projects of Microsoft’s Democracy Forward team. She discussed democratic resilience in the age of AI, engaging our students on topics such as how corporations can work to protect democratic institutions and actors, promote a healthy information ecosystem, and defend global elections against an increasingly complex technological backdrop. 
     
    Arjun ’25 interviewed his dad Nanad Mulchandani, CTO of the Central Intelligence Agency. They discussed how authoritarian regimes can weaken the founding ideals of democracy by sowing distrust, and how election integrity has become an issue of national security. 

    Eric Westervelt, Editor/Correspondent/Host NPR News, and father of Olivia ’27 talked with a group of students about the danger of viral disinformation and personal responsibility, explored the weaponization of misinformation in the race for the nation’s highest office, and answered their thoughtful questions.

  • Bryan Carmel ’96 and Paul Freedman ’96—Co-founders of the Oakland Ballers


    College Prep classmates Bryan Carmel ’96 and Paul Freedman ’96 have joined forces on a mission to bring the joy of baseball back to Oakland and breathe new life into West Oakland’s historic Raimondi Park. After the Oakland Athletics, (the A’s), announced their departure from the city, Bryan and Paul put their heads together to found an independent baseball team: the Oakland Ballers, or the B’s, as they are known by their fans. The Oakland Ballers represent more than just a sports team—they symbolize hope, opportunity, and the promise of a brighter future for Oakland’s residents.

    Bryan and Paul’s friendship began at College Prep, where Paul joined the School as a sophomore. “We were friends from the beginning,” Bryan recalls. Along with their other Prep friends, they spent countless evenings at Oakland A’s games, enjoying the era of Dollar Wednesdays at the Oakland Coliseum. Fast forward 27 years from their graduation, and their shared love for baseball and their community has evolved into a transformative project—the Oakland Ballers.
     
    Upon graduation from Prep, Bryan attended Columbia University before earning an MFA from the University of Southern California Film School. He went on to become an award-winning development and production executive and producer. Reflecting on his time at College Prep, Bryan fondly remembers influential English teachers like Nancy Steele and Harry Chotiner. As student council president in his senior year, Bryan forged a strong relationship with the then Dean of Students Andy Dean and was admired by both peers and faculty. His leadership was recognized with the prestigious Ruth M. Willis Award for service, character, and excellence.
     
    Paul earned his BA in Public Policy from the University of Chicago, and his career has been guided by a commitment to social impact and community development. He established himself as a successful education entrepreneur, founding and operating several socially conscious nonprofit and for-profit businesses. Most recently, Paul served as President of Guild Education, a certified B Corp that partners with Fortune 500 companies to provide debt-free college degrees. 
     
    Bryan and Paul’s collaboration building the Oakland Ballers began unexpectedly. When the A’s announced their departure from Oakland, Bryan was picketing with the Writers Guild of America in Hollywood, and Paul had recently left Guild Education. Paul texted Bryan, “Hey, I have a crazy idea… could we start a baseball team?”
     
    By combining their skill sets—Paul an entrepreneur and Bryan a storyteller—and shared passion for community activism, they devised a plan for the Oakland Ballers. The B’s join the Pioneer League as its first-ever West Coast member. Paul emphasized their mission, stating, “I strongly believe that the real value of a sports team is in its relationship to the community it serves. Baseball is a sport with deep roots in this country and a rich legacy in the East Bay. With the Oakland B’s, we intend to build a team committed to honoring that legacy and our community. We are going to bring joy back to the game and give Oaklanders something to be proud of.”
     
    With the Oakland Ballers, Bryan and Paul are not just creating a sports team; they are fostering a renewed sense of community and pride. Their journey from College Prep classmates to innovators in the baseball world is a testament to their enduring friendship and shared vision for Oakland’s future. The Ballers are poised to be a beacon of hope and unity, reflecting the values and spirit that Bryan and Paul have carried with them from their days at College Prep.

  • Neel Valeti ’21 and Teammates Win Inaugural X Developer Challenge


    Neel Valeti '21 (photo: far left) and his team won first place in the "X Developer Challenge," a two-day competition where they had all-access to X API as well as xAI/Grok (Grok is X's version of ChatGPT) API to build a product. Neel's team built a Chrome extension called InsightX that adds an “analyze” button to every post. When the button is clicked, it provides insights on the post's factual accuracy, sentiment analysis on the post’s author, an “All-Angle View” on the post’s topic, and a search tool to find all of the author’s posts on a given keyword. At the end of the challenge, Neel and his team presented their project to Elon Musk and met X's engineers. Watch a clip from KPIX news here.

  • Advanced Physics Seminar, Waves


    Students in our advanced physics seminar, Waves, visited Meyer Sound to learn about sound waves. They met with audio engineers to see how sound systems are assembled and used to shape the sound in concert halls and theaters. They visited an anechoic chamber, which absorbs all reflected sound. They also experienced how 2-D and 3-D speaker arrays can make a small theater sound like a big one, and a big theater sound small.
    This hands-on advanced course explores sound waves and music, light waves and color, matter waves and earthquakes. This semester students have built musical instruments, radios, and telescopes, while focusing on conceptually understanding the physics principles behind waves.

  • Intraterm 2024


    Intraterm is a one-week experiential learning program where students participate in courses that encourage intellectual risk-taking and adventure. Some of this year’s local courses include bowling, CrossFit, rock climbing, leather crafting, glassblowing, pickleball, and much more. Trips include cultural immersion and community involvement in Mexico, exploring the terrain of lava flows and geology of Hawaii, learning to surf in Santa Cruz, analyzing the dynamic intersection of technology, culture, and the environment in Seattle, and appreciating Black History as central to understanding American History in Washington DC ! See some of the action on our Instagram feed.

  • Ethics and Artificial Intellegence—Making Meaning from Knowledge


    With Artificial Intelligence and its applications rapidly developing, College Prep continues to make meaning from knowledge through in-person discussions that cannot be replaced or replicated by AI. In guided conversations, students are examining ethical gray areas that AI technology presents. 
    When music is sampled without permission • Do artists and creators have the right to sue OpenAI for using their content? • When markets are manipulated using artificial intelligence and financial crimes result, does AI
    have personhood? •     How is culpability for such crimes going to be determined?
     
    Students wrestle with these questions in a new History elective, Ethics and Artificial Intelligence, taught by Ian Beier. He introduces case studies as a way for the students to examine ethical matters within a challenging legal framework. “Anxiety about AI exists everywhere, largely because this disruptive technology is not regulated under any specific laws,” Beier explains. This course encourages students to assess and evaluate the diverse scenarios where AI may pose ethical issues. Classroom conversations are thoughtful and dynamic as students engage with relevant real-world challenges and their own use of AI.
     
    One real-world challenge that our teachers face is figuring out how to access evidence of student learning when ChatGPT allows people to outsource the creation of some tried-and-true measures. An essay once offered a window into a student’s thinking, but in the age of ChatGPT, it could just as easily be the output of a well-authored prompt. 

    College Prep teachers develop lesson plans that emphasize the importance of process. Much of the scaffolding around student discussions is built on a concern that students should not be outsourcing their thinking. The significance of how solutions may be derived, ideas are pursued, and conclusions arrived at, are emphasized rather than condoning the idea that students should head directly for answers. Assessments are designed so that students can demonstrate the paths they have taken to their destinations. They are tasked to explain the provenance of evidence and justify their conclusions, which ChatGPT cannot do well.
     
    Beyond the Ethics and Artificial Intelligence course, teachers across disciplines are reimagining methods by which learning outcomes can be measured. “AI can be a useful tool for repetitive or formulaic tasks, but we want students to understand where AI stops being a positive tool. When it starts being detrimental to learning is when it shortcuts the process that gives value to a classroom exercise,” says Preston Tucker, History Teacher and Director of Curriculum Innovation and Research. “We believe that our students want to learn, but AI can tempt a student to take shortcuts. By leaning into the social dimensions of learning, we can see that students aren’t taking shortcuts. When a student teaches a concept to their table group, explains their conclusions to the class, or debates the meaning of a passage, we know they are developing skills. That work can’t be outsourced.”

    College Prep teachers build learning experiences around human interactions and creativity, in the age of ChatGPT just as before. Developing their problem-solving skills and communication abilities in this familiar way, students prepare for an AI-driven world and are better equipped to adapt as the transformative technology evolves.   
     

  • CPS Week: Conscious Consumerism and Media Awareness


    This year’s theme for Connections, Pride, and Spirit (CPS) Week was Conscious Consumerism and Media Awareness. All week, a structured series of speakers, workshops, and hands-on activities were led by students, faculty, staff, parents, and community leaders. Collectively, we highlighted our purchasing power as informed consumers and investigated the ways our citizenship is linked to production and consumption. Topics included race in social media algorithms, labor practices in the cocoa industry, traditional Middle Eastern marketplaces, carbon offsets, mending clothing, mindfulness, “girl”ification, mending clothing, deceptive advertising, preserving fruit,big tobacco, microplastics, and imagining the end of capitalism.

  • MLK Day of Service


    On MLK Day, some College Prep students and families joined the Parents' Association Equity & Belonging Committee in a day of service honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. They picked up trash in Oakland and planted trees as part of Oakland's Transformative Climate Communities (TCC) grant and the "Better Neighborhoods, Same Neighbors" Initiative, supported by Trees for Oakland, Higher Ground, and the Oakland Parks and Rec foundation.

  • Independent Study


    In Independent Study, students work closely with a faculty mentor to design their own course of study and dive deeply into a topic about which they are passionate. This fall semester ten students went beyond our core curriculum in pursuit of a wide variety of topics including 3D-printed textiles, auxetic structures, environmental justice, creative writing and family narratives, fine woodworking & joinery, French literature, functional programming in Haskell, topology in mathematics, Galois and fundamental groups, Spanish politics and the impact of colonialism, storms as a literary theme, and sorting algorithms and their speeds.

  • The Hill Project receives Design for Well-Being Award from the California AIA


    We are excited to share that The Hill Project received an award from the California AIA, under their 2023 Design for Well-Being Awards. You can read more about this recognition here. 
     
    College Prep’s simple shingled buildings and inviting landscape hold and shape our school, creating a unique learning environment.This new facility, in the heart of campus, has more than doubled classroom and student gathering spaces. Since its opening in January 2022, The Hill Project has transformed our school. The courtyard, surrounded by beautiful gardens, is a place for gatherings of all kinds, including Assembly. Nooks and crannies throughout are filled with students having lunch, mulling over a good book, meeting with advisory groups, and consulting with their teachers. The Hill Project will serve our students and teachers for generations to come.

  • Common Classroom


    Common Classroom is a weekly rotating set of engaging, ungraded learning opportunities. Teachers, students, and alumni lead activities, classes, and workshops across a range of ever-changing offerings that include art projects, political discussions, physical pursuits, and more. Students are encouraged to take and lead new classes throughout the year. The first week of 2023-24 offerings include:
    Animal
    Arc Browser: The Future of Computing
    Aux Battles
    College Prep Soccer Film Highlights
    Cuban Dominoes
    Extemporaneous-O-Rama
    Girls Varsity Tennis Media Day
    Healthcare 101: Personal Insurance
    Intro to Finance: Money, Markets, and More!
    Meditative Mandala
    Open Gym Volleyball
    Outdoor Yoga
    Rule the Turntables: Lear to DJ
    Tea and Sympathy
    What Happened in the World Track Championships?
    What’s the Deal with… True Indictments?
    World Games
    ‘Zine Club

  • 38th Summer Academy at College Prep


    This summer, Partners welcomed 60 Scholars representing 15 middle schools from Oakland and the East Bay, and celebrated this year’s theme of “Scholar Voices.” Through core classes in English, Math and Social-Emotional Learning, and electives such as Engineering, Coding in Python, Brazilian Dance, Debate, and Financial Literacy, our Scholars’ voices were amplified, their curiosity nurtured, and their grit strengthened. More about the Partners Program here.

  • North Coast Section Division II Champions!


    College Prep Boys Varsity Soccer team made School history this year when they ended their undefeated season as North Coast Section Division II Champions!

  • Congratulations Swimmers!

    Congratulations to our women’s relay swim team for placing 14th in the 400 Free Relay at the California Interscholastic Federation State Championships. The girls swim team placed 5th overall at North Coast Section, and are the Bay Area County League-East champions. The boys swim team also competed in NCS and finished second in BCL-East. Go Cougars!

  • Annual Dance Showcase: Essential Joy

    Students danced their hearts out in our annual Dance Showcase: Essential Joy. The performance was the culmination of our classes' explorations of many dance genres and the communities that created them, including Contemporary, Afro-Caribbean, Jazz, Congolese, and Hip Hop. Congratulations to all of our dancers, choreographers, and techs who made the show a success—the JOY was palpable!

  • STOak Hosts Screening of the Documentary, Alice Street

    Students in our Applied Studies course, Social Transformation—Oakland (STOak), hosted a screening of Alice Street, a documentary about the gentrification of Oakland, art as resistance, and activism. We were fortunate to be joined by community activist, artist, and poet Ayodele Nzinga, Chinatown community organizer Lailan Sandra Huen, and documentary film director, Spencer Wilkonson, for a Q&A panel. 
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