2 students named Presidential Scholars

Bentonville High School seniors share academic success, enjoyment of the arts

The two Bentonville High School students whom the U.S. Department of Education named as 2022 U.S. Presidential Scholars last weekhave one thing in common besides a portfolio of academic success. They enjoy the arts. Rachael Thumma, 18, is an avid Bharatanatyam dancer. Bharatanatyam is a form of Indian classical dance. Thumma collaborated with a team at Dhirana Academy of Classical Dance in Bentonville to create the first-ever Indian dance drama in Arkansas.

Saahas Parise, also 18, played guitar for the Bentonville High School Competitive Jazz Band. The band won third place at the 54th annual Drury Jazz Festival in 2020.

“I have been playing guitar since the second grade,” he said in an email.

Thumma and Parise are among 161 high school seniors who were selected nationally by the White House Commission on Presidential Scholars.

The Presidential Scholar award goes to one male and one female high school senior from each state, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and U.S. families living abroad, with another 15 students chosen atlarge, 20 in the arts and 20 in career and technical education.

More than 5,000 candidates of the 3.7 million students who are expected to graduate from high school this year qualified for the 2022 awards based on their College Board SAT or ACT exam scores or through nominations.

In selecting the scholars, the White House Commission considers a student’s academic success, artistic and technical excellence, essays, school evaluations and transcripts, and commitment to community service and leadership.

Thumma, who scored a perfect 36 on the ACT and a near perfect PSAT score (1500/1520), will be attending the University of Notre Dame. She plans to major in biochemistry in the university’s pre-med track.

After that, she said she hopes to go to medical school and become a physician/physician researcher.

“Currently, I am super interested in identifying preventive factors (such as different vitamins/minerals and environmental factors) and risk factors (such as biomarkers, body compositions, and cultural diets) that are involved in chronic diseases,” she said in an email.

“As a physician, I hope to develop new modes of preventative care to combat lifestyle based chronic diseases such as heart disease and diabetes, as well as cater current treatment standards to better fit the metabolic and cultural makeup of ethnic minorities in America. My ultimate goal is to lead initiatives to make population-specific preventive medicine accessible to underserved populations across the world to abate the prevalence of chronic disease.”

Parise is going to Duke University to study computer science.

He said he wants to become either an artificial intelligence researcher or a technology entrepreneur.

“I want to design ethical A.I. for social good, such as intelligent tutoring systems to improve the quality of education in third world countries or non-discriminatory A.I. for use in legal court cases.”

In 2018, he was the recipient of the “Irish or Irish-American History” Prize at National History Day for his website on the Irish independence movement.

He is founder and CEO of Tech-Kno, INC., a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to inspiring the next generation’s involvement in the world of emerging technologies.

Parise is also co-founder of the musicNU project, an in-development free virtual platform teaching music theory concepts to underprivileged students at Northwestern University’s Technological Innovations for Inclusive Learning and Teaching Lab.