Welcome to the MaCS Program, a specialized program at  William Lyon Mackenzie C.I.

• Michael Smith Challenge

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  Congratulations to all the students who wrote the grade 10 "Michael Smith Challenge"! It is a science competition run by the University of British Columbia. Two MaCS students finished in the top 3% in the country! We also had another twelve students finish in the top 10% in the country!

  

• Canadian Computing Competition (Top 30 in Canada)

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  Earlier this month at the University of Waterloo, three MaCS students competed at the Canadian Computing Competition. Congratulations to Ryan Jiang, Atharva Washimkar, and Justin Pu who all received Bronze Medals.

  

• University of Waterloo Chemistry Contest

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  Congratulations to all those students who wrote the grade 11 and grade 12 chemistry contests from the University of Waterloo. Three students placed in the top 5% in both contests!

  

• MaCS Graduation

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  This week MaCS students celebrated their graduation with a certificate ceremony and reception! We wish all the MaCS graduates the best of luck in September! We look forward to celebrating one more time in a few weeks at Commencement!

  

• Science Extravaganza at Sick Kids Hospital

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  Last month, 5 students were selected to attend "The Science Extravaganza" put on by Manulife Kids Science. Students got the opportunity to meet researchers and doctors, visit research labs, participate in learning activities, and learn about the research and innovation that is taking place at Sick Kids Hospital.

  

• University of Western Science Olympics

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  Forty of our science students attended the University of Western Science Olympics last week. Congratulations to all our winners! Thank you to Wilson Wong for his many dedicated months in support of the Robotics Team. Thank you to Cindy Law, Nicole Cheung-Seekit and Sean Devine who chaperoned this overnight trip and cheered the students on throughout the competition!

  

• Grade 8 MaCS Orientation

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  Last week was Grade 8 Orientation Day at Mackenzie! From the opening introductions to the wrap up BBQ, students were made to feel welcome! Thank you to all the student and staff volunteers!

  

• University of Guelph Science Olympics

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  Congratulations to those students (Grade 9 through 12) who participated at the University of Guelph Science Olympics this past week! Students had an amazing university experience during the competition and left with four first place team certificates and 2 third place team certificates. Great Job Mackenzie!

  

• Grade 11 MaCS Trip: Blue Mountain Resort

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  This past week the grade 11 MaCS students spent three days at Blue Mountain in Collingwood! The hotel accommodations at the Grand Georgian and the food at Blue Mountain were outstanding as were all the leadership and team building activities that the staff at the resort provided for the students!

  

• University of Toronto National Biology Competition

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  The results of the University of Toronto National Biology Competition are in- Mackenzie tied for 3rd in Canada out of 215 teams! Two of our students placed in the top 1% of all 3317 eligible contestants. In addition three of our students have been designated National Biology Scholars for placing in the top 5%. Congratulations to the whole science department for supporting these exceptional achievements!

  

• CISCO Event - Girls Power Tech Day

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  The organisers said" "We felt it was a great event and everyone was very impressed with the level of commitment and participation from the students.". Special thank you to Mr. Wong for taking the students.

  

• Dance Team- Final Showcase

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  Congratulations to the Mackenzie Dance Team under the supervision of Ms. Parravano who competed in March at the tdsbCREATES (Dare to Dance) competition where they were chosen as a finalist. Last week as a finalist, the dance team performed at the Toronto Centre for the Arts in the final showcase!

  

• ECOO Programming Competition

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  Congratulations to the Mackenzie team- Justin Pu, Atharva Washimkar, Abdul Arif and Arsh Raza who won silver medals at this year's ECOO Programming Provincial Competition!

  

• Grade 12 MaCS Trip

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  This past week grade 12 MaCS students had an amazing evening downtown! The evening started with dinner at Quinn's Steakhouse followed by the musical Strictly Ballroom at the Princess of Wales Theatre!

  

• DECA International Competition

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  Congratulations to our MaCS students who competed at the DECA International Competition in California last week. (Aaron Gao was a finalist, Rikard Saqe won a case medal and placed in the top ten, Kevin Shen won a test medal and placed in the top ten, Edward Wang won a case medal, a test medal and placed third, and Annie Tseng won a case medal, a test medal and placed second!

  

• Regional ECOO Competition

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  Congratulations to the three Mackenzie teams who competed at the Regional Computer Programming Competition earlier this month. All three Mackenzie teams did very well with one team placing second overall and moving onto the Provincial competition later this year!

  

• Ted talk

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  This past week at Mackenzie, TED-club's perspective event was held in our school library where students, teachers, and guest speakers could inspire students using their life experiences. Our speakers ranged from a 4-time Canadian kickboxing champion to our very own student council president, all of which were amazing!

  

• Arts In Bloom/Java after Dark

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  Mackenzie’s annual arts celebration Arts in Bloom included lunchtime Dance and Drama performances, figure drawing, cookie decorating and an Art Battle; a painting challenge with students finishing a canvas in under an hour. Java After Dark took place in early April. An evening of spoken word, dance, music and homemade treats. Organized by the Arts Council, over 60 students performed, including Mackenzie's Concert Band.

  

• TDSB Creates Arts Festival

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  tdsbCREATES is a system-wide, celebration of dance, drama, media arts and visual arts. It culminates in a festival which takes place in April and May 2017 in schools, communities, galleries, and performing arts venues around the city of Toronto. A team of Mackenzie students choreographed and performed a dance that was selected for the final showcase and got to work with professional choreographers. Students from Mackenzie have been chosen to take part in the Dance and Spoken Word Showcase and the Art and Film Exhibition.

  

• Future Aces Scholarship

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  Congratulations to Julianah Oguntala (Grade 12 MaCS) who last week received the Herbert H. Carnegie Future Aces Foundation Scholarship and Citizenship Award. Julianah has also been hired this summer at Sunnybrook Health Sciences in the Focused Ultrasound High School Summer Research Program.

  

• Computer Programming Competition

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  The Computer Programming team hosted their first all girls high school competition on April 18th at Mackenzie! Nine schools participated with 74 students overall competing in 24 teams. It was a valuable experience for everyone! Thank you to our guest speaker from Google who collected the problem sets our MaCS students had developed for the competition and we look forward to Google attending future events at Mackenzie!

  

• University of Waterloo Math Contests

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  Congratulations to all the MaCS students who wrote the Pascal, Cayley and Fermat Math contests. This year 50 grade 9 students, 30 grade 10 students and 31 grade 11 students ranked in the top 25% in Canada. Our grade 9 Math team ranked 4th in Canada! Great job Mackenzie! Congratulations to all the MaCS students who wrote the Pascal, Cayley and Fermat Math contests. This year 50 grade 9 students, 30 grade 10 students and 31 grade 11 students ranked in the top 25% in Canada. Our grade 9 Math team ranked 4th in Canada! Great job Mackenzie!

  

• Computer Programming Competition

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  Congratulations to all three Mackenzie teams who qualified for the ECOO (Educational Computing Organization of Ontario) Regional competition to be held on Saturday, April 29. All three teams are looking forward to the next round!

  

• Canadian School Computing Olympiad

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  Congratulations to our grade 12 MaCS students- Justin Pu, Ryan Jiang and Atharva Washimkar who have qualified for the Canadian School Computing Olympiad at the University of Waterloo in May! Only 20 students from Canada are selected to attend.

  

• Ontario Junior Citizen Award

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  Congratulations to Seher Sarin (Grade 12 MaCS) for receiving a certificate of recognition after being nominated for the Ontario Junior Citizen Award. The award is promoted through the 300 newspapers of the Ontario Community Newspapers Association, which Metroland Media Toronto is a member. (https://www.guelphmercury.com/news-story/7101156-toronto-teens-honoured-with-ontario-junior-citizen-awards-nomination/)

  

• Harvard Pre-College Program

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  Congratulations to Irina Petrovic (Grade 11 MaCS) who will be attending the Harvard Pre-College Enrichment Program this summer. Irina will be attending challenging classes on the subject of her choice (Neurobiology of Behaviour) while living on campus (https://www.summer.harvard.edu/high-school-programs/pre-college-program).

  

• VEX Robotic Competition

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  Thank you to Mr. Wong and our MaCS Engineering students who competed in this year’s VEX Robotic Competition at St. Michael’s College. The students worked hard building a robot with capabilities of picking up stars and cubes. The team donated their winnings back to the school to be used in preparation for next year’s competition!

  

• Exploravision Regional Winner

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  The Regional winners for ExploraVision have now been officially announced. Congratulations to Adrian Watson, Anna Hwang, Julie Nguyen, and Phuong (Cindy) Nguyen! Their project is titled "The Purification of Water Using Genetically Modified Desulfobacteraceae" and the abstract is posted here:http://www.exploravision.org/regional-winners. The region in which the students won includes all of Canada as well as Iowa, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Minnesota, Ohio, Wisconsin, South Dakota and North Dakota. The total number of entries in their category (grade 10-12) for their region is 1,315.

  

• Exploravision Honourable Mention Winners

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  We have 3 Exploravision Honourable Mentions. They are Scientific Telepathy (Izabella Wise, Gabby Chan), The Prosthetic Epiglottis (Russell Leong, Alex Ngan, Shannon Oh, Samar Ahmed), and Wearable Technology for the Diagnosis and Management of Mental Health Disorders (Michal Moshkovich, Jessica Peter, Rayne Fisher-Quann, Leyla Abdolell). Thank you to Ms. Law for supporting and mentoring the students throughout the competition.

  

• DECA

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  Congratulations to all the MaCS students who competed this year at the business DECA Provincial Championships! Special mention to the following students who will be competing at the International Championships in California next month- Annie Tseng, Lucy Chen, Ben Ma, Irina Petrovic, Gabby Chan, Oscar Chong, Aaron Gao, Edward Wang, Elizabeth Tater, and Kevin Shen!

  

• Destination Imagination

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  Congratulations to our Destination Imagination team (Grade 12 MaCS) who placed 1st in the regional tournament with a perfect score. They will move on to compete in the provincial tournament in April.

  

• Middle School Science and Engineering Olympics (MSEO)

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  This past week we hosted our annual Middle School Science and Engineering Olympics. Twelve middle schools in the TDSB participated in the event. Thank you to all the student and staff volunteers who organised the events and took on a leadership role to help make the day successful once again!

  

• HOSA Conference Competition

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  This past month some of our MaCS students competed at the HOSA Conference Competition. Congratulations to the students for a job well done! Below is a list of the Mackenzie HOSA Future Health Professionals prize winners: (Harsimran Darhan Human Growth and Development 1st place, Ester Yoo Biomedical Laboratory Science 1st place, Andrew Lee Pharmacology 1st place, Jennifer Huynh Pharmacology 2nd place, Alexandra Misura Medical terminology 2nd place, Jason Wang and Michael Wu CPR/First Aid 2nd place, and Mandy Wai emporaneous Health Poster 3rd place)

  

• Grade 10 MaCS Trip

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  Last week the grade 10 MaCS students had an amazing three day trip at the Canadian Ecology Centre!

  

• SHAD Valley

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  Congratulations to the 4 MaCS students (Vicki Chang, Deepinder Kumar, Angie Lo, and Esther Yoo) who have received offers for the SHAD Valley Summer University Enrichment Program in July!

  

• OFSAA Wrestling

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  Congratulations to the students on the Mackenzie Wrestling Team for a great effort at the City Championships! Congratulations to the MaCS students who qualified for the OFSAA Championships later this year- Jordan Levy, Megan Abel, and Genevieve Norris-Roozmon!

  

• A day in the life of a Google software engineer

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  On January 20, 2017, the girls from the gr 10 and 11 MaCS Computer Science classes enjoyed a visit from a female software engineer Vaiva Imbrasaite. Vaiva delighted the girls with real stories of work and life at Google Inc. , answered many questions but most of all inspired and encouraged a future generation of female software engineers.

  

• University of Waterloo Engineering Competition

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  Grade 11 MaCS students Gina So and Caroline Liu competed in an all girls engineering competition at the University of Waterloo. They achieved the Runner Up award for their work in both the Research Symposium, where they presented and analyzed Thermal Meta-material, and a Design Challenge, where they solved various problems using an Arduino and coding.

  

• CIMC/CSMC Math Contests

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  The CSMC/CIMC Math contest results are in and congratulations to all MaCS students who wrote the contest! For the CSMC we ranked first in the Zone, 5th in the Province and 8th in Canada! We also received two gold medals and 46 Certificates of Distinction for students who ranked in the top 25th percentile in Canada!

  

• Grade 9 Speech Contest

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  Congratulations to the Grade 9 MaCS students who participated in the annual Lions Roar English Public Speaking Contest. The speeches were creative and innovative!

  

• Grade 9 MaCS Geography Trip

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  Our Grade 9 MaCS students who have Geography this semester had the opportunity to tour our city and create a Google Earth File with the use of a GPS unit!

  

• JAVA after Dark

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  Last week MaCS students had the opportunity to participate or attend the annual Java after Dark event at Mackenzie. Congratulations to the MaCS students who showcased their talent at Java! Over 300 Mackenzie students attended the event!

  

• CIMC/CSMC Math Contests

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  Congratulations to all MaCS students who wrote the CIMC/CSMC math contests this past week!

  

• MaCS Entrance Test Day

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  Thank you to all grade 8 students who chose to write the MaCS entrance test and submit their application package this past Friday. We had a record number of applicants- over 600 applicants for 90 spots! Notification letters will be mailed the week of January 23, 2017 to all applicants.

  

• MaCS Information Night

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  Thank you to all those who attended our MaCS Information Night this past Thursday. It was standing room only in our school cafetorium and library presentations with approximately 1800 people in attendance! Grade 8 students had the opportunity to hear from both current and alumni MaCS students.

  

• Grade 9 MaCS Trip

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  The Grade 9 MaCS students had an amazing trip last week at the Muskoka Woods Leadership Centre. Students developed their leadership and communication skills and had an opportunity to meet all the Grade 9 MaCS students in the program!

  

• McMaster University Science Olympics

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  Congratulations to all the MaCS students who participated last week at the McMaster University Science and Engineering Olympics. Despite the rain, the students had an amazing learning experience and enjoyed the day!

  

• Summer Internship at SickKids Hospital

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  Julianah Oguntala (Grade 12 MaCS) had the unique opportunity to work at the Peter Gilgan Center for Research and Learning at SickKids through a paid internship program called the Student Advancement Research Program (StAR) this past summer. She was placed with Dr. Daniel Roth, who is currently conducting a study to test the hypothesis that vitamin D3 supplementation during pregnancy improves infant growth in a setting with a high prevalence of childhood stunting. The internship was an amazing learning experience!

  

• Grade 9 Day

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  Grade 9 MaCS students had the opportunity to participate in Mackenzie's annual Grade 9 day Orientation. Grade 9 students had an amazing afternoon participating in team building games and meeting other grade 9 students at Mackenzie. Our senior level students and student council members once again proved to be great leaders for the afternoon program! A great start to the school year!

  

With over 350 students, a good portion of the student population at Mackenzie is part of this program. This program is one of a kind, giving students many opportunities both academically and non-academically. Please feel free to take the time to search the site and learn about the many possibilities that are waiting for you. For a start, look at our Gallery Page for pictures and descriptions of a variety of activities/events our students take part in.

If you are interested in being a part of this elite program, please go to the Application Page for more information.

For present students, please go forward to the Current Events Page.

Thank you and I hope you enjoy your experience.

S. Leder

MaCS Coordinator
W.L. Mackenzie C.I.