2nd-Grader’s Poster Is a $200 Winner in Contest

WIND POWER: A Lomita 7-year-old whose award-winning poster appeared in the California Energy Commission’s 1993 calendar received a $200 bond this week from the agency.

David Levine, a second-grader at Maimonides Torah Academy in Lomita, was among 12 children whose artwork was selected for

the calendar in the agency’s eighth annual statewide poster contest.

Levine’s poster, titled “Catch the Wind,” depicts a mountain with windmills. According to the Energy Commission, it illustrates “the potential significance of ‘wind power’ in California’s energy future.”

A panel of judges picked the winning designs from nearly 2,000 entries submitted by private and public school students throughout California.

COLLEGE FAIR: The Torrance Council of PTAs and the Torrance Unified School District will have their annual college fair Saturday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Torrance High School, 2200 Carson St.

South Bay students from high schools including Palos Verdes Peninsula, Mira Costa, Bishop Montgomery and Redondo Union are invited to the fair, which is free.

Alumni and admissions representatives from about 125 universities, colleges and trade schools will be on hand to provide prospective students with information on admission policies, program planning, student life and financial aid.

Participating colleges include Harvard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Notre Dame, USC, UCLA and UC Berkeley.

“It’s really just to give students a living person they can talk to,” said event chairwoman Linda Korka. “Some kids don’t even think about going out of state or out of California. This is just to try to get them more information.”

CAMPUS TOUR: Sixty-one Lennox Middle School students will tour Loyola Marymount University Friday in a program designed to encourage them to consider college careers.

To get a taste of what it’s like to apply for college, students attending the event have had to fill out applications and obtain teacher recommendations and parental approval. The students will tour the campus, see a physics demonstration, have lunch, hear a lecture on public speaking and work on MacIntosh computers.

Pam Rector, a school counselor who coordinates the college readiness program, said the effort targets students who might not otherwise consider themselves college material.

“For many of these kids, we talk about them going to college, but they’ve never been on a campus,” Rector said. “They see it as a lot of work, but they don’t realize college can be a lot of fun.”

Like Lennox, Loyola Marymount has a large minority student population, Rector added. “Being on the campus, they see students that look like themselves,” she said, “and they think, ‘If they can do it, I can do it.’ ”

Items for the weekly Class Notes column can be mailed to The Times South Bay office, 23133 Hawthorne Blvd., Suite 200, Torrance, CA 90505, or faxed to (310) 373-5753 to the attention of staff reporter Kim Kowsky.