Deseret News archives +: Remembering the very first Sterling Scholars show
When Steve Hale came to his editors at the Deseret News with an idea to honor Salt Lake City area high school students, he met a receptive audience.
The Desert News had already been recognizing high school athletes for their successes, so to do the same for top scholars made perfect sense.
The year was 1962. More than 60 years later, the Sterling Scholars program is well known for its celebration of student success.
And it grows and grows each year.
According to Sterling Scholar organizers, Hale, a columnist, suggested that the Deseret News sponsor a program to spotlight scholastic achievement.
Hale, along with education reporter Lavor Chaffin and marketing director Keith West, realized that outstanding academic scholars were not recognized in any manner. They decided to meet with members of the board of education in Salt Lake City for support in recognizing high school seniors.
After the board of education approved the program, Chaffin and West created 12 categories and requested that each school nominate at least 12 candidates. They also decided to name the program 'Sterling' since sterling, by definition, is something pure and valuable and scholars seemed like a natural second word. Hence, the name Sterling Scholars was created.
The first year, the program was only held in Salt Lake City but it quickly spread to Cache and Utah counties and then across all of Utah.
Coverage in the Deseret News that year included photos of the winners on the front page, along with stories about those who helped with the awards program and what parents and school leaders said about the event.
As a fun side note, one winner, who was not present because he was competing in the National Science Fair competition in Seattle, did not find out he had won until the following day, when his parents phoned him.
KSL soon joined the Deseret News in its endeavors and even telecast the event for many years.
Consider how may high students are involved in the program. There are more than 100 schools, and each nominates a winner in each category. The competition categories have been expanded to 14 and now include regional winners in different parts of the state.
Students begin building their portfolios at the school level. Winners then advance to regional and final competitions. Winners receive awards and recognition, while some colleges and universities in Utah offer financial assistance to top nominees in the Deseret News/KSL Broadcast Group Sterling Scholar Awards Program.
The final awards program is now streamed live by KSL-TV.
It is now considered quite prestigious to be a Sterling Scholar, and it would probably be easy for a Sterling Scholar math nominee to figure out how many Utah high school seniors have been honored.
But the process and what is learned along the way can be valuable as well.
Here are some stories from Deseret News archives about the program:
"How Sterling Scholar has awarded Utah's brightest students for 57 years"
"Sterling Scholar builds on a 53-year history"
"Sterling Scholars: Where are they now?"
"Meet the Deseret News/KSL 2025 General Sterling Scholar"
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- Yahoo
Exclusive: Military contractor says she was fired for noting problem that ‘jeopardized the safety of U.S civilians and troops'
A software engineer working for one of the Pentagon's most prominent defense contractors claims she was fired after flagging 'critical software safety issues and errors' written into the code that controls high-tech automated artillery systems used by U.S. forces, as well as various other nations throughout the world. Deborah Hale alleges the problems violated at least eight different laws, rules, or regulations set out by the Army, Department of Defense, NATO and even NASA, which 'would have prevented appropriate safety tests from being properly developed and tested, severely jeopardizing the safety of American civilians, troops, and allies,' according to a state lawsuit that has now been removed to federal court. Hale's suit says that since she was let go in 2023, the Reston, Virginia-based Science Applications International Corporation – known as SAIC, Inc. – has blackballed her throughout the industry. SAIC has annual revenues of some $7.5 billion, and works extensively with the federal government across numerous agencies, in addition to the DOD. Attorney Kelly Chanfrau, who is representing Hale, called her client 'an incredible employee with vast knowledge and experience.' 'Her allegations and complaints are serious and no employee should be retaliated against based upon complaints, especially when she was trying to protect our military and civilians,' Chanfrau told The Independent. In an email, an SAIC spokesperson said, 'SAIC cannot comment on any litigation matters.' The software underpinning the U.S. military's Multiple Launch Rocket System, or, MLRS, contained crucial errors, according to a whistleblower lawsuit. The software underpinning the U.S. military's Multiple Launch Rocket System, or, MLRS, contained crucial errors, according to whistleblower Deborah Hale's lawsuit (U.S. Army photo by KCpl. 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Yahoo
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- Yahoo
Robert Jarvik, who co-designed the first permanent artificial heart, dies at 79
Dr. Robert Jarvik, who was a key designer of the first permanent artificial heart implanted in a human, died on Monday in his Manhattan home at age 79. Jarvik received his medical degree at the University of Utah, and the implant of the first permanent artificial heart took place at the school as well. The surgery became the subject of both public fascination and fierce debate over medical ethics. According to The New York Times, Jarvik's wife, Marilyn vos Savant, said his cause of death was complications from Parkinson's disease. Jarvik was born in Midland, Michigan on May 11, 1946, and grew up in Stamford, Connecticut. His father, Norman, was a physician who ran a family practice and his mother Edythe ran scheduling at the practice, according to The New York Times. Growing up, he was a 'tinkerer' who planned to study architecture but turned his interest to medicine after his father survived an aortic aneurysm, the Times obitury said. Norman Jarvik later died of a second aortic aneurysm. Jarvik attended Syracuse University before studying medicine for two years at Italy's University of Bologna. Jarvik received a master's degree in occupational biomechanics from New York University and then moved to the University of Utah in 1971 where he completed a medical degree in 1976. Jarvik did not follow the traditional medical career path of internship and residency, because he was more interested in developing an artificial heart, per The New York Times. He married Vos Savant in 1985, who survives him. Jarvik had two children, Kate Jarvik Birch and Tyler Jarvik, from his marriage to playwright and former Deseret News journalist Elaine Levin Jarvik, to whom he was married from 1968 to 1985. Vos Savant also has two children from a previous relationship, Mary Blinder and Dennis Younglove. Jarvik had five grandchildren. Jarvik was on a team that worked with Dr. Willem Kolff, the director of the university's Division of Artificial Organs, to design a series of mechanical hearts. One of them, in 1982, was implanted in a cow named Alfred Lord Tennyson, who survived for 268 days, setting a record for an animal. It was in 1982 that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration gave permission to the University of Utah to implant a permanent artificial heart in a human. On Dec. 2, 1982, Dr. William C. DeVries led the surgical team that implanted the Jarvik-7 model in Barney Clark, a 61-year-old retired dentist. To encourage excellent work, Kolff put a student's name on a version of the heart to which they'd made a significant alteration, which is how the heart became the Jarvik-7, as Deseret News reported. The surgery to implant the Jarvik-7, made of aluminum and plastic, lasted seven hours and afterwards Clark told his wife, 'I want to tell you even though I have no heart, I still love you,' per the University of Utah. Clark survived 112 days attached to a 400-pound air compressor — roughly the size of a dishwasher — which helped the Jarvik-7 pump blood through his body. He never left the hospital and the complications included seizures, kidney failure and a broken valve on the artificial heart. Clark died on March 23, 1983, of complications of a bacterial infection of the colon. The second and third patient lived 620 days and 488 days, respectively, after receiving the experimental heart. According to The New York Times, their survival showed that people 'could live long term on the plastic and metal device,' but that the complications the recipients suffered 'impaired the quality of their lives and blunted initial enthusiasm for the heart.' Reporters from all over flocked to University of Utah hospital to cover the artificial heart. The news was celebrated by some, criticized by others. 'By the mid-1980s, medical ethicists and theologians were debating whether artificial hearts improved life or extended a painful decline toward death,' per The New York Times. The Jarvik-7 was implanted in five patients as a permanent artificial heart and used hundreds of times as a temporary implant as patients waited for a donor heart. The FDA withdrew approval in 1990. In 2018, Jarvik was honored by United Business Media for Lifetime Achievement, according to The University of Utah. After leading Symbion, Inc., which was based in Salt Lake City, Jarvik founded Jarvik Heart, Inc. in 1987, based in New York. The company developed smaller, less obtrusive ventricular assist devices that helped pump blood from the heart's lower chambers to the rest of the body. The Jarvik 2000 is around the size of a C battery and its pediatric version, the Jarvik 2015, is about the size of a AA battery, per The New York Times.
