In lieu of the annual awards ceremony that focuses on academic achievements, Uni's new end-of-year awards event aims to celebrate other student achievements as well.

This year a Uni Exploravision team, coached by David Stone, consisting of sophomores Gloria Ha, Max Li, Ananth Nandakishore, and Roberto Chapa won their regionals competition. The team then placed in the top six teams at nationals.

Uni High seniors Joey Smith and Sarah Yockey have both won 2012 Good Citizen awards from the Daughters and Sons of the American Revolution [DAR/SAR]. On Friday, they were honored at a luncheon at the Champaign Country Club.

Four Uni High students recently won honors in a video essay contest that was a part of Money Smart Week 2011.

Uni High is known for its history of student recognition. In the month of March alone, students were recognized for their accomplishments in the regional Science Olympiad competition, the annual District Congressional Art Contest, and the Solo & Ensemble Music Contest. The Uni High girls' swim team was recently awarded a Silver Award by the National Interscholastic Swimming Coaches Association.

Seventeen Uni seniors have recently been named National Merit Finalists. Only 15,000 seniors nationwide earned the distinction out of some 1.5 million students who took the PSAT in the fall of 2009. As finalists, the students are eligible for some 8,400 Merit Scholarship awards, worth more than $36 million.

Two Uni students have been honored in the annual Insect Fear Film Festival's annual art contest. Subfreshmen Alice Trellakis and Gillian Moore won first and second places respectively in the grades 6-8 category of the competition.

Uni won first place in Division 3AA at the Illinois Council of Teachers of Mathematics regional contest Saturday at Parkland College. The team finished with 622 points, the fourth-highest 3AA regional score anywhere in the state. Uni now advances to the state finals, which will be held on April 30 at the University of Illinois.

Every year, Uni students participate in the ExploraVision international science and technology contest held by the Toshiba Corporation and the National Teacher's Association. This year was the contest's 19th year, and for the third consecutive year, five Uni teams have received Honorable Mention.

Senior Kahlilah Cooke will be advancing to state in the annual Poetry Out Loud competition in Springfield on March 11 after winning regionals. She will recite "The Empty Dance Shoes," by Cornelius Eady, "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time," by Robert Herrick, and "The Enigma," by Anne Stevenson.

The Uni High WYSE Academic Challenge team won a regional championship Feb 18 at Parkland College, defeating Centennial and taking first place in five of seven categories. Uni has won WYSE state championships in 11 of the last 13 years. Next up: sectionals on March 8 at Eastern Illinois University, with the state finals to follow in April at the University of Illinois.

This year, the Illinois First Amendment Center held its annual First Amendment poster contest. Junior Annie Rong won second place for her Freedom of Assembly poster. This is her second time participating in this contest, where she won honorable mention in last year's contest. Check inside for a look at her award-winning poster.

The Poetry Out Loud competition will be held this year on Feb. 16 and 17 in 106N. Each competitor has to memorize and recite two poems from the Poetry Out Loud website by memory, to be rated by three judges and an accuracy judge.

The computer science department at the University of Illinois announced the open competition of the North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad (NACLO), an educational event that attracts a handful of Uni students each year. NACLO is a contest in which high school students solve linguistic puzzles and exercise logic skills.

This year, four Uni students were selected to go to the IMEA All-State Conference. Next month they'll be performing with top high school musicians from around the state in Peoria.