Schools
WHIZ KID: Jordan Stachura
This National Merit Scholarship winner hopes to study physics and graphic design in college.
Hereford High School's Jordan Stachura is ambitious, to the point where you might call the University of Maryland-bound senior a budding rocket scientist who is shooting for the moon.
"I've worked for a good part of the year with my physics teacher, Mr. [Jeremy] Smith on this cosmic ray detector project with the charging of muon frequencies, which are particals from outer space," Stachura, 17, said.
The project has caught the eye of CERN (Central European Research Network or Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire), a European organization known for its nuclear research.
"It's a continuing study that is part of a bigger project that Mr. Smith is involved in," Stachura said. "And it might be sent to CERN in Switzerland, where they study sub-atomic particles and things like that."
Stachura was recently honored as one of four Baltimore County seniors to receive a National Merit Scholarship from the National Merit Scholarship Corporation.
The award is sponsored by the University of Maryland, which Stachura will attend to study physics and graphic design.
The scholarship ranges from $500 to $2,000 per year and is renewable throughout the undergraduate tenure
Stachura has a 3.8 GPA and scored 2300 out of a possible 2400 on his SAT.
"I've been accepted to the honors college at the University of Maryland in College Park, and I'm going to be in the honors humanities dorm," Stachura said.
Stachura was also a member of last fall's Class 3A state championship cross country team, and was a defensive team captain on the Bulls' county title-winning junior varsity boys lacrosse teams as a freshman and sophomore.
As a varsity-playing junior, Stachura was a member of the Bulls' Class 3A state championship lacrosse team.
"I was a defender and played long pole midfield on the junior varsity lacrosse team. I was a little on the small side as a defender, which is why I believe that I was so good as a midfielder," he said.
Among Stachura's long term goals is to work with Einstein's theory of relativity.
"A lot of science is misunderstood, particularly physics, so I'd really like to do a lot of work there," Stachura said. "Because it would be really interesting to have a single, unifying theory that describes everything and that is elegant and simple. I'd like to do that or, if not, go into teaching."
