William L. Dickinson High School

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William L. Dickinson High School is a four-year public high school located in Jersey City, New Jersey, in the United States. Dickinson is part of the Jersey City Public Schools.

Dickinson occupies a prominent location on a hilltop overlooking lower Jersey City and the New York Harbor. The largest school in Hudson County, it has a student population of 3,500, half of whom are Hispanic, 14% of whom are Black/African American, and the remainder of whom are of White, Asian, or Middle Eastern, Indian, or Pakistani descent.

Originally named Jersey City High School, the property was purchased in 1904 and the new building opened on September 6, 1906, in an attempt to relieve overcrowding in the city's public schools.^[1] In 1913, the school was renamed William L. Dickinson High School for the superintendent who had advocated for creation of the school during his term from 1872 to 1883.^[1]

A testament to the school's age, the rear of the building is the site of a late 1800's-era cannon mount built to protect the Hudson River shoreline from early invaders. Given the location of the cannon and the associated technology of the time, its doubted that the cannon would ever have been effective as a defensive emplacement. While the cannon has since been removed, the original mounting remains and is now the site of a black-granite monument to the victims of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

[edit] Awards and recognition

In 2002–03, students Juliet R. Girard and Roshan D. Prabhu won the team competition of the Siemens Westinghouse Competition for "Identification and High Resolution Mapping of Flowering Time Genes in Rice." The duo shared a $100,000 scholarship with their victory.^[2]