Upper school students have the option of taking Game Theory and Honors US History next year, adding new classes to the Business and Entrepreneurship (B&E) and History departments.

The B&E department added the Game Theory course as another academic option post-AP. Students will be able to take Game Theory after completing AP Microeconomics.

Sam Lepler, the current teacher of the economics courses and advisor to Oeconomia, will teach the course next year.

“[Game theory] is unbelievably applicable to almost every facet of real life,” Lepler said. “From figuring out the strategy of dating to strategies in sports for penalty kicks or playing tennis, you try to find what is the strategy there. And it’s not always to got to your strengths.”

Arnav Tandon (11) looks forward to taking game theory next year for both the games and videos in the class as well as the subject material.

“When we learned about it in micro initially, I was very intrigued by the whole psychological aspect of game theory, the behavioral prediction part.” Arnav said. “I am looking forward to taking a much more detailed course regarding it.”

Honors US History will be available for juniors next year as a more challenging alternative to US History and a less intense option than AP US History. The course will be taught by Katy Rees, Damon Halback, and Julie Wheeler, the current US history team.

“We thought there were and have been students at Harker who have, in their junior year, been really busy with things outside their history course, who may want an alternative, since APUSH is such an intense course,” Donna Gilbert, head of the history department said.

Evan Barth, the academic dean at the upper school, commented on the transition period to find the ideal honors class, referring to the feedback he received from the implementation of the Honors World History 2 course two years ago.

“Since every junior takes US History, having this new option is a game changer,” Barth said. “With a new core class, it takes a while to figure out what the perfect balance between honors and AP is, but I think we’re pretty good on that right now.”

Satchi Thockchom (10) reflected on the class that she plans to take for next year.

“I am looking forward to the more in depth view compared to [AP US History] and learning about my own country’s history,” Satchi said. “Regular is really slow-paced and deep, but not as challenging as honors and [AP US History] is really broad and very fast-paced and challenging, so there is a nice balance between the two.”

Game theory and Honors US History add additional variety to the plethora of options Harker students will have in the years to come.

This piece was originally published in the pages of The Winged Post on May 4, 2016.