Liou Named High School's Valedictorian

Alison Liou is busy.

A violinist in the Belmont High School orchestra and at the New England Conservatory, Liou, a senior, helps teach local elementary students at Saturday Morning Music School. She is a member of the high school's math team and co-captains the science club. In the fall, she plays ultimate Frisbee; in the winter, she runs the 300-meter and 600-meter for the varsity track and field team. She is also in a dance group and is a tour guide at Harvard's Museum of Natural History.

Yes, Alison Liou is busy, but she wouldn't have it any other way.

"I joined all these different things because I enjoyed doing them in the first place," the sociable 18-year-old said recently. "In some ways, they do take up a lot of your time, but, at the same time, I feel like you're spending your time purposefully. You also meet so many great people."

In addition to her extracurricular commitments, Liou, a member of the National Honor Society, also does quite well in the classroom. However, a few weeks ago, she received a bit of a scare.

"I was leaving school one day, and I heard them call me down to the main office on the announcements," she said. "Of course, I got worried. I was like, 'Oh no, what did I do wrong?' Usually, it's not a good thing to be called down to the office."

But this time it was. Liou was named the valedictorian for the class of 2010 for having the highest cumulative grade-point average.

Born in Mississippi, Liou, a native Mandarin speaker, said learning English as a second language made her appreciate the learning process. As a freshman at Belmont High School, she then refined her interests under the tutelage of physics teacher John Loosmann.

"I got really drawn into the sciences," she said. "I think [Loosmann] made physics interesting and really showed us how to apply it to the real world."

Liou will attend Harvard University this fall with five of her classmates, including salutatorian Tom Miller. She plans on being a pre-medical student, majoring in chemistry with a strong biological focus. Last year, she won a science club competition for her presentation on epidemiology, or the study of the factors affecting population's health and illness.

She said Belmont's varied course offerings, especially at the junior and senior level, helped her hone her interests and provided a wide-range of opportunities. For example, she selected Colombian novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez as the topic of her senior English thesis after reading Love in the Time of Cholera, in addition to some of his short stories in her Spanish class.

As for the next step, Liou said she has mixed emotions about graduation.

"We're going to be thrown into this whole other world without the people we've known our whole lives," she said, "but at the same time, it's also a chance for new opportunities, and I'm really excited about that."

Liou said she plans to work and spend time with friends and family this summer.