An atypical induction to SIS national honors societies

Saipan International School held its National Honor Society, National Junior Honor Society, and National Elementary Honors Society induction ceremonies on May 6, 2021, at the Queen’s Club of Kensington Hotel Saipan. (CONTRIBUTED PHOTO)

Saipan International School held its National Honor Society, National Junior Honor Society, and National Elementary Honors Society induction ceremonies on May 6, 2021, at the Queen’s Club of Kensington Hotel Saipan.

In many ways, this was a year of firsts for SIS and the national honors societies. They have never held their inductions together before, or held them in masks or had to limit audience participation due to COVID-19 restrictions, but the students, staff, and administration pulled off an hour-long induction ceremony followed by dinner at the Kensington. The ceremony started with the current members ushering in the inductees to Pomp and Circumstance before they were forced to leave the ballroom to make room for guests.

In his opening remarks, SIS headmaster Dr. Ron Snyder credited the success of the students to three things: expectation, opportunity and a culture of hard work. “Expectations of success begin at home with the parents, where excellence is expected and students meet the challenge.” SIS builds on these expectations, he said, by offering opportunities for personal, academic challenge through a rigorous course load that includes about twice the number of Advanced Placement courses than any other school on island.

“SIS offers 15 AP courses and the next closest school offers eight. And our students excel in these classes. The SIS pass rate for AP exams is 82%, while the typical global pass rate is around 60% and the rate is just slightly greater than 20% for the CNMI as a whole,” he added.

He credits the students for their own culture of hard work, in which they strive to meet the expectations by taking advantage of the opportunities placed in front of them and by excelling at their endeavors.

At SIS, the NHS, NJHS and NEHS have very stringent membership requirements. To be considered, students must have at least 3.7 GPA and must go through a rigorous selection process. The candidates are evaluated on the basis of character, leadership and service to the school and the community, and a faculty council decides the admission of the candidates. To maintain membership, the new members must maintain the high standards and participate in a service project. For the past years, NHS members of SIS have adopted a year-long school-wide mentoring program to assist elementary and middle school students and students who have special needs. Because of cohorting restrictions for COVID-19, honor society members had to decide to virtually serve the community through dDosomething.org, in which members chose individually projects to fulfill the needs of the community, locally and globally.

For school year 2020-21, Saipan International School added Eunbi Choi, Zhouri Han, James Zheng, Francine Asedillo, Tiana Cabrera, Jesse Sablan, Linxi Cai, Sam Culp, Huiwon Jeong, Yunwoo Nam, Hyeonbo Shim, Rachel Shin, and Kexuan Yu to NHS and Seiyul Hong, Olivia Hwang, Da Soung Kim, TaeKyoung Kim, John Linden, Andrew Sablan, Jayden Shin, Yebin Shin, Omari Joab, Charlene Son, Irin Chung, Jung Won Huh, Scarlett Kim, Daniel Joab, and Zi Hao Zhu to NJHS. NEHS added Finn Altizer, Faith Ariola, Eliza Culp, Dean Duenas, Beatrice Gross, Michael Guintu, Yewon Huh, Yiming Li, Keoni Ruszala, and Alleena Villaluz to its membership.

With these additions, SIS has 36 NHS members, 31 NJHS members, and 14 NEHS members. (PR)