Meet two of South Side’s brightest students

Valedictorian and salutatorian prove as well-rounded as they are intelligent

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“I feel that kids are smarter than me,” said Morley Hawriluk, a South Side High School graduating senior who was named this year’s valedictorian. “I honestly didn’t even expect it.”

His classmate Grace Feiner is South Side’s salutatorian. “I always knew that, yes, I’ve been able to maintain pretty high grades,” she said, “but there are so many people who have done pretty much the exact same thing, and are just as deserving of the same recognition.”

The humility of the two students is their biggest similarity.

Hawriluk, 17, who amassed a weighted 104.86 grade point average over four years, said his childhood curiosity fueled an interest in math and science, which he has carried with him through South Side. “I feel like [math] emulates nature, or tries to explain it, which I always appreciated,” he said.

A vice president of Mathletes and president of the Engineering Club and Quiz Bowl, Hawriluk also ran cross-country throughout high school. His highlight of the four years, however, was an internship at Mount Sinai Hospital, where for two summers he challenged himself in ways he never had before.

There he was tasked with doing statistical analyses of the symptoms of hospital patients with Parkinson’s disease. Using those stats, Hawriluk figured out how to best use drugs to treat them. During his second summer at Mount Sinai, he taught himself to code, which helped him determine whether a computer program could predict whether patients would have lymphoma based on attributes he or she already had.

“It just made me realize how cool computers are and computer science is to solving problems in biology, for example, or really in anything,” Hawriluk said.

Though math and science always came easy to him in school, that isn’t the path he necessarily wants to take in the future. Hawriluk chose not to reveal where he plans to attend college, and is not yet sure which of his interests he will pursue.

“Math and science would be great, but I also like history and foreign languages and philosophy, so I honestly have no clue,” Hawriluk said. “Maybe something interdisciplinary, because I feel like a lot of problems that are currently facing the world can definitely be attacked from multiple perspectives.”

On the other hand, Feiner, 18, who was unsure of her exact GPA — noting it was somewhere north of 104 — knows precisely what she wants to do. Set to attend Elon University in North Carolina in the fall, she plans to study psychology and neuroscience.

Captain of the varsity volleyball team this past year, Feiner is also involved in Athletes Helping Athletes, a club that focuses on mentoring younger students in sportsmanship and making good decisions, as well as Homework Helpers, for which she tutors fellow students. She coached an eighth-grade CYO volleyball team at St. Agnes for the past two years.

Feiner has also spent five summers working at Camp ANCHOR, in Lido Beach, which provides recreation for people with special needs, and which she said has been an incredible experience.

“I’ve been able to work with people of different ages and abilities and kind of help them through not only their daily routines, but also participating in activities that are designed for them and to just help them succeed,” Feiner said. “I’ve gotten to love all of the people that I’ve worked with, and I learned so much.”

She said she hoped to continue working with special-needs children, and wants to combine that interest with scientific research of the brain.

With successful high school careers behind them, the pair of self-driven students can now focus on more important things.

“It’s a lot better for my sleeping life,” Hawriluk said of summer’s arrival. “I’m definitely catching up on that.”