HHS Student Impact Award
Haverford High School Student Impact Award
The Haverford High School Student Impact Award encourages HHS students to take ownership of their education by advocating for significant and meaningful change to Haverford High School. Students often have great ideas about how their educational experience could improve, but with a fixed timeline and without experience effecting change in large organizations, they do not pursue them. This award encourages students to pursue these ideas and gives them structure and support for doing so.
Eligibility
The award is open to all HHS students. Proposals may be submitted at any time. A student may have at most two active proposals and is eligible for only one financial award.
Awards
A scholarship of $1,000 will be awarded to any project that successfully achieves the implementation of their proposal.
A scholarship of $500 will be awarded to any project where significant progress has been made.
Proposals
Guidelines for ideas
Because students should think broadly about ways to improve the school, there are limited guidelines for the types of ideas that students should submit. The proposal must be, however, for a significant and meaningful change to Haverford High School policy, the Haverford High School experience, or other policy that impacts the student experience of Haverford High School and Haverford Township School District (e.g. Haverford Township School District-wide policies, state policies impacting the HHS budget).
Proposals will be accepted based on their potential for significant & meaningful change and awareness of what it would take to make that change. We encourage students to reach out to discuss ideas that they think may be a fit to discuss further.
To provide some concrete examples, here are some existing or upcoming HHS policies and programs and whether they would qualify:
Would qualify:
Establishing the Pass/Fail grading system
Establishing the Early Dismissal/Arrival program
Establishing AP Computer Science as part of the curriculum
Would not qualify:
Starting the Hi-Q team (reason: creating a new extracurricular club does not constitute significant and meaningful change)
Reduce maximum class size to 15 students (reason: idea is not feasible, proposal does not show awareness of what it would take to make the change)
Process for submitting a proposal
All interested students may submit a proposal to be reviewed by the board by emailing HHSStudentImpactAward@gmail.com. Applicants can use the proposal template or another format of their choosing.
While proposals will be accepted at any time, there will be one period during each of the fall and spring semesters to evangelize the award and actively look for proposals.
For proposals that are not accepted initially, the board will provide feedback and suggest modifications.
Accepted proposals
Once a proposal is accepted, the student will be paired with a member of the board to serve as their mentor and thought-partner throughout the process. There is no specific structure for a proposal, but please see the example proposal below for a template and sense of scope.
Definition of successful implementation and meaningful progress
The board has complete discretion over defining a project as a “success” or an effort as demonstrating “significant progress” to inform the distribution of awards. Part of the mentorship program will include providing feedback on any changes in scope of the project as it might affect adjudication of success. For proposals that include additional, ongoing budget (e.g. establishing AP Computer Science), securing the necessary budget will be necessary for successful implementation.
Example Proposal
See an example proposal for adding AP Computer Science to the curriculum if it was not already offered.
Awarded Projects
Updating the middle school health curriculum to address LGBTQ+ issues
Students: Tommy Barnes ('20) and Jack O’Leary ('20)
Summary: The project focused on improving Haverford Middle School’s health curriculum with regard to LGBTQ+ issues. The students worked with middle school and district administrators to ensure that the district’s ongoing curriculum audit will address LGBTQ+ issues inclusively. They also contributed to plans for a “Wellness Day” to be hosted at the Middle School next year (after being postponed by COVID-19 for this year).
Improving access to menstrual products
Students: Georgia Evans ('20) and Alana McCaffrey ('21)
Project: The project recognized access to menstrual products as a barrier to students’ engagement at school and provides free menstrual product dispensers in HHS bathrooms. The project included securing buy-in from school administration, finding a vendor, identifying funding, coordinating logistics for maintenance of the dispensers, and responding to implementation hiccups.
Board
Simon Fox Krauss, HHS 2007 (chair)
Sara R. Shaw, HHS 2006