The Class of 2022 Valedictorian Devyani Vij and Salutatorian Joshua Harris were honored as the top of their class during The Dunham School’s Commencement Ceremony held Saturday, May 21 at Healing Place Church.
Valedictorian Devyani Vij attended Dunham for 14 years. During her high school career, she has taken 12 Advanced Placement (AP) courses and 14 Honors level courses, completing her academic coursework with an extraordinary 4.5152 cumulative grade point average. A member of the National Honor Society, Vij has also been named an AP Scholar with Distinction and a National Merit Finalist.
As an Upper School student at Dunham, Devyani was elected senior class secretary, and despite her demanding course load, also served as the Dunham Robotics team programmer and captain, Mu Alpha Theta president, Culture Club co-president, and a member of Dunham’s Institute of Leadership. In addition, she has actively volunteered in the community, serving the Baton Rouge Symphony through the Les Jeunes Amies organization.
Devyani also was selected by the Young Entrepreneurs Academy to study and apply the process of starting a business, creating a technology application, writing a business plan, and pitching it to investors. For her impressive presentation, she was awarded $2,000 from the judges; in addition, a private businessman invested an additional sum of $10,00 to further her research and development of the application.
In the fall, Devyani will attend Columbia University in New York City, entering the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences to pursue a major in Operations Research with a concentration in Financial Engineering.
Salutatorian Joshua Harris has been a student at The Dunham School for 13 years. During the course of his high school career, he has taken 10 Advanced Placement (AP) classes, 13 Honors level classes, and scored a remarkable 35 on the ACT college entrance exam. Joshua completed his high school academic career with a 4.4571 cumulative grade point average. A member of the National Honor Society and Dunham’s Institute of Leadership, he has been recognized as an AP Scholar with Distinction and a National Merit Scholar.
While maintaining his rigorous academic schedule, Joshua served as co-captain of the 2022 State Champion cross country team. He was also president of Mu Alpha Theta, winning multiple individual and team awards at area math tournaments. During his senior year, Joshua was the lead programmer and safety captain for the Dunham Robotics team. Throughout Upper School, he has served as class officer, has been actively involved in the Beta Club and Quiz Bowl team, and played three different instruments in the Pep Band.
Joshua plans to attend the Honors College at Louisiana State University in the fall, pursuing a double major in math and computer science.
(2022 photos by Eye Wander Photo)
