LAHS junior Quinton Geller, center, was recognized on Tuesday, April 19 by the Rotary Club of Los Alamos as a Distinguished Student of Service (DSS). He was joined by his parents, Elizabeth Hong-Geller and Keith Geller to his right, and LAHS French teacher Louise Foliot and Rotarian Vincent Chiravalle, the chair of the DDS program to his left. Photo by Linda Hull
BY VINCENT CHIRAVELLE
AND LINDA HULL
Rotary Club of Los Alamos
The Motto of Rotary is Service above Self. To support this, each academic year the Rotary Club of Los Alamos honors nine “Distinguished Students of Service” in their junior year of high school.
Students are first nominated by their teachers who are asked to select those who:
- have given positive contributions to the their High School and / or in the community,
- have a good attitude to learning,
- are good citizens, are respectful of their peers and teachers,
- and have good grades, attendance and classroom participation.
The Club then selects students based on demonstrated spirit of service and exemplification of the Rotary 4-Way Test. Is it the truth? Is it fair to all concerned? Will it build good will and better friendships? Will it be beneficial to all concerned?
The Rotary Club of Los Alamos recently selected Quinton Geller as a Distinguished Student of Service.
Geller is indeed one who has made service part of his life and is also a well-rounded student. Geller has served as the Vice President of Key Club, the Kiwanis youth service organization, and is a member of Mu Alpha Theta/National Math Honor Society, National Honor Society, and Interact, the Rotary youth service organization, through which he participated in packaging food donations for the Navajo Nation. In addition, Geller volunteers at the Pajarito Environmental Education Center (PEEC) where he often works in the gift shop, helps prepare planetarium shows, and educates visitors about the unique aspects of northern New Mexico’s ecosystem. In addition to these activities, Geller participates in math and science competitions as part of Science Bowl. He tutors math at Saturday School, and is also a member of the LAHS Robotics Team and the Coding Club in which he wrote an Android app in the Java programming language.
In a Rotary essay, Geller shared one of the challenges facing today’s youth, namely, “the climate crisis and the systematic destruction of our surroundings and our world.” Geller participates in Kiwanis’s bimonthly aluminum collections during which volunteers spend four hours weighing and collecting bags of aluminum for recycling. Geller writes, “The production of ‘new’ aluminum metal from bauxite ore is extremely energy-intensive and environmentally hazardous, so it’s important that we recycle as much already-processed aluminum as we can in order to preserve our natural resources and our environment. He continues, “I plan to continue my volunteer activities, and I am particularly interested in opportunities such as preserving our national parks and cleanup of our water sources such as lakes and coastlines.”
Members of the Rotary Club of Los Alamos feel that this is a very worthy effort and commend Geller on his service to the youth in Los Alamos. Geller is the son of Elizabeth Hong-Geller and Drew Geller. He named Los Alamos High School French teacher Louise Foliot as the teacher who has been most influential in his life.