Two St. Joseph seniors headed to prestigious colleges

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OGDEN — Olivia Arbogast does not take no for an answer; it’s a trait that has served her well in her four years at St. Joseph Catholic High School. It has also benefitted the school greatly — Olivia is primarily responsible for the school’s new solar array.

When she was a sophomore, Olivia, now 18 and a senior, took over Green Squad, the school’s environmental club. As she tried drumming up support and members, another student jokingly told her they would join the club if Olivia got solar panels for the school.

“They thought, ‘Oh you’re not going to get anything done; well maybe if you get solar panels, I’ll join,’ and I was like, ‘Well, there’s no reason I can’t,’” she said.

It ended up being a two-year project. Olivia worked with school officials and Synergy Power to obtain a Rocky Mountain Power Blue Sky grant so that last fall 157 panels, totaling $100,000 in value, were installed on the school’s two buildings.

The solar project is just the tip of the accomplishments for Olivia, a National Merit semifinalist who will be one of the school’s first AP capstone (a diploma program based on two yearlong Advanced Placement courses) graduates. She was recently accepted into John Hopkins University, her father’s alma mater, where she will study biomedical engineering.

“I was really thrilled to find out I would be going there, because not only did I feel like I was going to be comfortable there, but just all the opportunities it will give me later in life,” she said.

The daughter of a psychiatrist and a special education attorney, Olivia hopes to become an orthopedic surgeon. In her freshman year at St. Joseph’s, she took a sports medicine class, where the students watched videos of orthopedic surgeries.

“While almost everyone was sitting in the corner gagging watching all these surgeries, me and one of the seniors were in the front row just enthralled by everything we were seeing,” she recalled.

Orthopedic surgery is “a field of medicine I think is very rewarding because it’s all regenerative and healing medicine,” she said. “An orthopedic surgeon gets to come out of every procedure saying, ‘I’ve made this person more comfortable; I’ve made their life better.’”

Olivia doesn’t just excel academically. She recently starred as Maria in the school’s December production of “West Side Story,” has been named Academic All-State in cross country and took 11th at the state cross country meet. Riding since she could get on a horse, she regularly competes nationally and is the Intermountain Region representative for the Unites States Pony Clubs’ National Youth Congress.

“I’ve just always been a pretty independent child and an only child, so it’s always been if there’s something I can’t do or that I want to do, I just try to work for it as long and as hard as I can,” she said.

Olivia started at St. Joseph Elementary School in fourth grade after a few years at public and charter schools. Her parents enrolled her at St. Joseph’s because it could provide advanced classes for their daughter. She continued her education at St. Joseph Catholic High School.

“It’s a small community where the teachers really know you, and they are ready to care about you when you ask them to,” she said of the school. “I think that’s really valuable because whenever I’ve wanted to try and challenge myself or put myself out there or needed help because I challenged myself too much, there’s always been a really good supportive community to help me keep pushing while staying balanced with the rest of my life.”

“Her determination and dedication to her craft, whether that be in Green Squad, whether it be in academics, in doing AP courses, whether that be in cross country, the results speak for themselves,” Principal Clay Jones said of Olivia. “We’ve been able to accomplish a lot of different things with her help because she’s determined to complete whatever task she sets her mind to. Her dedication is going to take her a long way, to John Hopkins and beyond.”

Another student who has benefitted from four years at St. Joseph CHS is Kennis Zheng, 19, an international student from Canton, China. He has been accepted into the Rhode Island School of Design, where he will study printmaking. He likes printmaking because it is a versatile medium, he said.

Kennis, who stays with a host family, said his parents enrolled him at the school because it has a better environment for education.

“Compared to the school I went to in China, here has fewer people, fewer students. It’s quieter, so it can make me actually think and stay to think,” he said. “I have time for myself to figure out what I should do and what I’m good at; I give myself a lot of time here.”

Kennis has had three pieces shown in the annual student exhibit at the Eccles Community Art Center. The inspiration for his art has two elements, he said.

“People say art students are emotional people, but I think only emotion is not enough; rather than emotions we need rational thinking in making these art pieces,” he said. “What we need is the emotions to give us ideas; emotions to feel the world, to feel the things around us, and then we need to make this world for rational thinking and rational poses.”

“In the art I make, the really important thing is that they have warm emotions, human emotions like warmth, being nice to each other, that kind of emotion; but also they can go into the theory or technique of art, and those are cold and rational,” he added.

Art teacher Peggy Barker said Kennis is an excellent student who works very hard. “He comes in with ideas that he’s already developing and working on intellectually. He’s always exploring, looking at what other artists are doing and he just has a very creative mind; it’s always evolving,” she said. “He has grown very much in his understanding of different processes and how to work with different materials. He’s amazing; he’s an artist.”

Jones remembers that Kennis was shy and subdued when he first came on campus, but “now he’s just blossoming as an artist,” he said.” I credit Miss Barker with all of that, but Kennis puts forth so much effort now. When he first got here, he was scared and missing his family, but he has become part of St. Joe’s; he’s become ingrained in St. Joe’s. He’s really been successful.”

Jones echoed Olivia’s sentiments about  the St. Joseph’s community. What some might consider the school’s weakness – its small size – is actually its greatest strength, he said.

“The size is a huge advantage over any other Catholic school that is around,” he said. “Having a small community, teachers knowing every single person’s name … I think it makes a stronger community. It also gives them buy-in that ‘somebody does care about me. ... I’m not just another number walking around a high school.’ You’re able to blossom more.”