LAUNCH 2017

"Since the first LAUNCH day my freshman year, I've seen other groups meet this goal, but I've never seen any other LAUNCH event be more successful in integrating our ideas into the student body and our larger community." - Bailey Leopard (honors seminar student and senior) ​

With over 60 students involved, LAUNCH Day was an absolute success.

"LAUNCH is an Episcopal Upper School showcase started by a small group of students in 2014. It has grown over time to include the contributions of nearly a hundred students as presenters, performers, planners, or crew members. It is a  student-planned and student-executed celebration of ideas and achievement at Episcopal. These 2017 honors thesis presentations included thought provoking ideas and displays that Episcopal High School has never experienced to date."

The LAUNCH 2017 lineup included Episcopal seniors such as Katherine Ann Andreff’s self-produced play, Butternut High, which sought to display the diversity and many opportunities Episcopal has to offer.  Daniel Johnson, Caden Dickson and Alicia Stamey presented their business proposal to create school tours for private school for those new to the Baton Rouge area. Families, friends, and honored guests experienced fine art paintings, sketches and sculptures from Episcopal’s finest visual art students.

LAUNCH  Day allowed for students and presenters to completely invest themselves on topics and ideas in which they were 100% passionate. Educating their peers on topics such as the media, politics, fashion, the environment, and our very own health enabled students to gain inspiration for their future endeavors, opening doors to dealing with stress or media awareness or self-identification. From teaching to inspiration, LAUNCH Day participants gained insight, and maybe even some hope, for the greatness Episcopal maintains and adds to each and every year.

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But LAUNCH was not only about education and learning. It was about community. The community was the hub connecting students, faculty and the LAUNCH pad. If the presentations were the brains of this event, then the LAUNCH pad could be called  the heart and soul. Hosted entirely by high school seniors Azha Alston, Audrey Cifreo, Nina Jalenak, Ellie O’Brien, Emma Scott Singletary, Bria Turner, and Maddie Delacroix, students were encouraged to let loose and enjoy the high school experience. We gathered under the oaks to listen to throwback jams and together we danced, sang, and enjoyed the company of our closest friends, teachers, and classmates.

Along with strength of community and knowledge, two things that differentiate Episcopal from other schools, LAUNCH Day allowed for a large sense of awareness - from Madison Ruston’s thesis on Tourettes, that will later be expanded into an awareness walk, to Sienna Williams and Chanler Turnley’s more controversial presentations on breaking barriers in the media beyond gender and race lines to Kaylin Chauvin’s presentation on rape culture. LAUNCH Day presentations encouraged the concepts of change and openness to new ideas and perspectives, raising awareness of underlying misconceptions enabled through the media, or diseases that are a lot less rare than one may think.

With knowledge, community and awareness come success. Success can be defined as the accomplishment of an aim or purpose, and that’s exactly what LAUNCH Day was. LAUNCH day accomplished something greater than what could be put into words or confined to just this one day experience at Episcopal. Taking on bigger causes and greater cases, LAUNCH Day accomplished the task of informing, impacting and influencing the future of its community.

I personally want to commend such a grand effort from my peers and acknowledge their prolonged strength in such an exhausting but worthwhile process.

​From the well-spoken words of Episcopal’s renowned cross country and track coach, “Go, knights, good people, have fun!”

"It was really exciting seeing something that Emma Scott, Audrey and I had been working on for so long to finally come to life!"  - Nina Jalenak (senior)

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Jamiee Williams

Jamiee is an Episcopal senior and has attended Episcopal for the past five years. She is an active  member of the Episcopal track team, softball team, and clubs. Jamiee is a member of the National Honors Society as well as Spanish National Honors Society. In the next chapter of her life, she plans on attending an out of state university to major in civil engineering or architecture.