The Fox Chapel Area High School marching band recently won first place in its division at the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Marching Band Association state championships for last year's program, "Paint Me a Picture."

The band also won awards for High Visual Effect and High General Effect for the division.

Drum majors are senior Taya Flaherty and sophomore Patrick Ross. Guard captains are seniors Lauren Glacken and Noelle Evans.

A total of 24 bands from Western Pennsylvania high schools participated in the competition in the fall at Norwin High School.

The Marching Foxes won first place in all of the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Marching Band Association competitions they entered this season.

Avonworth High School junior Stephanie Stewart was selected recently to participate in this summer's Introduction to Engineering Program at the University of Notre Dame.

The three-week program is designed to give students a taste of college life while exposing them to the various education and employment opportunities available in the engineering world.

Stephanie is one of about 150 students chosen to participate based on class rank, cumulative QPA, or quality point average, and essay answers.

Avonworth Middle School eighth-graders Travis Koehler and Christopher Pendrak, and ninth-grader Andrea Weinzierl will participate in the Junior High District Choral Festival scheduled for Feb. 2-3 at Trinity High School in Washington, Washington County.

Avonworth High School senior Benjamin Werley has been selected to perform in the All-Eastern Honors Mixed Choir during the Eastern Division Conference of the National Association for Music Education from March 8-11 in Hartford, Conn.

Benjamin is the first Avonworth student to achieve this honor. Approximately 350 vocalists are expected to perform in the mixed chorus this year.

The Hampton High School team of captain Griffin Patterson, Wendy Li, Sean Malone and Tom Backeris, took first place at the Science Bowl at Robert Morris University last month. The winning team was given Robert Morris sweat shirts, science bowl pocket drives and a $50 gift certificate for the coach.

Competing against seven schools, Hampton moved to the finals, successfully answering questions about chemistry, biology, physics, astronomy and geology. Teacher Mary Lou Ellena-Wygonik coached the team.

Nineteen Hampton High School students competed in the Future Business Leaders of America regional meet at Butler County Community College this month, qualifying them for all-state competition in Hershey in April.

Winners in Hershey earn the right to compete at the Nationals in Chicago, Ill.

The winning students and their specialties are:

Seniors: Lauren Marciano, Accounting I; Brad Matthews, Accounting II; Eric Jackson and Nick Wilt, Business Calculations; Elisa Boody, Alyssa Miller and Kayla Neff, Business Ethics; Joseph Cangilla and A.J. Virostek, Business Procedures; and Rob Celin, Economics.

Juniors: Kevin Cook, Banking and Finance; Haley Harrison and Elizabeth Lakatos, Business Communications; and Kelly Crum, Marketing.

Sophomores: David Neff, C++ Programming; Yanpei Ai, Cyber Security; and Stephanie Dandrea and Kayla Guadagnino, Intro to Business Communications.

Freshman: Jason Kikel, Intro to Business.

The students, advised by teacher Anthony Howard, competed against 465 others from 15 schools in the region.