All students participated this year, with 120 scoring above the 50th percentile and 59 earning medals. Eleven students also qualified for monetary awards of $75 and $50 for their performance.

Students earned a total of 117 medals and achievements:
27 Gold 90th–100th percentile
20 Silver 80th- 89th percentile
12 Bronze 70th - 79th percentile
61 Achievement Certificate 50th - 69th percentile

About 4,700 students from 200 schools participated, with about 2,000 medals and monetary prizes distributed. Students were taught by Italian teachers Ms. Buono, Ms. Perrone, and Mr. Rodriguez-Diaz—”grazie mille” for their hard work and encouragement this year! “Grazie mille” to the BLSA for supporting our students and making it possible financially for them to participate. “Congratulazioni” to all of the students who volunteered and worked hard for their results during this difficult year—we are proud of your achievements!

Established in 1985, the NIE is the official national language contest for middle and high school students of the American Association of Teachers of Italian. It is a web-based proficiency and performance assessment that measures written and aural interpretation skills in alignment with the ACTFL Performance Descriptors and the 2012 ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines. For more information, go to the website.

(In the following list * denotes a monetary award.)

Gold
Abraham Coumbassa
Alexander DeMaio*
Mary Deng
Prianne Domercant
Penelope Duff-Wender
Charles Ellrodt*
Isabella Endozo
Brandon Flores*
Thomas Germain
Lela Lahyani*
Alexandra Lee
Kate Lincecum
Jasper LoRusso*
Nicla Marabito*
Adamaris Merida-Cruz
Dimitra Minasidis
Filippo Montanari*
Andrea Pineda
Matilda Sherman*
Islay Shilland
Theodore Stein
Elliot Strand
Carina Szocik*
Sheyla Urban
Maya Valencia
Kyle Vo*
Benson Wong*

Achievement
Abubakar Abanoor
Elda Alibeaj
Isabella Almeida
Angel Angulo
Ben Blanchard
Julia Cantelli
Evan Casali
Maxine Cavallaro
Susan Chahwan
Vivian Chen
Kayla Connolly
Sarah Deane
Victoria DeMarco
Leo Deng
James Emery
Emily Polcaro
Eimy Feliz
Yakub Fiin
Amelia Fix
Mark Gemmett
Maxine Grover
Henry Guscott, Jr.
Micah Gusefski
Joseph Hemr
Gabriel Henriquez
Catherine Jestin
Xavier King
Anna Kriscenski
Alisa Lame
Cortney Lenz
Hazel Lewy
Elaine Lin
Zakea Lowe
Shane Lundrigan
Gigi Maalouf
Ami Mai
Chloe Manning
Nicole Martinez
Caitlin McDonough
Kevin Nguyen
Kenzie O'Brien
Nathan O'Reilly
Aylin Ozdemir
Wil Padgett
Sam Parsi
Santiago Pereira
Kylie Peterson
Eleonora Pisani Ricciarini
Kathryn Regan
Nikole Rey
Manuela Rios Castaneda
Steven Sahatjian
Emma Sullivan
Charlotte Taieb
Noel Tekie
Caela Thompson
Kenny Tran
Kathy Tran
Angela Wells
Ross Wilson
Melania Yee