PHS Valedictorian 2018 - Sydney Morris

Class of 2018 on black background of red diploma cap image

Plymouth High School is proud to announce this year’s valedictorian is Sydney Morris. Sydney is the daughter of Joseph and Lynn Morris. She holds a 4.192 GPA and is top of the senior class of 239 students.

For the past four years, Sydney has been a member of the SEED Club; the acronym stands for Students Engaged in Environmental Development. She was also a member of the Chinese club for one year. Sydney has been a proud member of the PHS Spell Bowl team for three of her four-year high school career. She says her proudest moment in high school involves Spell Bowl and is one she remembers vividly. “We were at Spell Bowl Invitational, and I received a perfect score. I was extremely excited, and I hope to cherish this memory forever.”

Sydney plans on attending McGill University in Montreal, Canada this fall to study linguistics, where she would like to pursue minors in both Chinese and French. After earning her bachelor's, she may pursue graduate studies in computational linguistics and then use that knowledge to work in the field of artificial intelligence.

During the summer of 2017, she was named an AP Scholar with Distinction and during her junior year. Sydney was chosen to receive the Rising Star of Indiana for the Class of 2018 award by the Indiana Association of School Principals (IASP).

She was awarded the Indiana University Honors Program in Foreign Languages (IUHPFL) Award of Excellence after participating in IUHPFL’s program abroad for Indiana high school students in China during the 2017 summer. She placed 2nd in the speech portion among level 3 participants, and 1st in the writing portion at the 10th Midwest Chinese Bridge Speech Contest for US High School Students at Valparaiso University last spring. She placed 2nd among level 2 participants at Valparaiso University’s 9th Annual Great Lakes Region High School Chinese Speech Competition last spring.

In November she was chosen as a semifinalist for the prestigious National Merit Scholarship. In March she received the PHS Annual Academic Excellence Award for being in the top 5% of the class of 2018. She received a McGill University Major Entrance Scholarship. During the PHS Senior Awards Assembly in April, Sydney received the Eugene and Florence Stanley Scholarship and the Richard F. and Betty J. Heiser Scholarship. This same month she was inducted into the Plymouth High School Academic Hall of Fame by the Chinese department, and she was recognized as a Regional Academic All-Star by the IASP.


Valedictorian Class of 2018 Sydney Morris Plymouth High School Logo