Owatonna High School is full of talented students, and among the best of them is Roshan Poduval, who has been selected by OHS Magnet to be in this week’s student spotlight.

Poduval has been on the Robotics team for three years now, and became the Programming Team Leader in 11th grade. Since becoming the Programming Team Leader, he has had the privilege to drive the team’s robot the past two years. His talents are a big reason for why the Robotics team is one of the best in the state.

Poduval also joined DECA this school year, and made it to state for an Entry Level Job Interview and a Principles of Marketing role play. he made it to the finals (Top 12) for the job interview at the State DECA competition. It takes a special student to reach that type of success with the little experience that Poduval has in the area.

Among his greatest talents is his ability to play the violin. He began playing the violin in the summer of third grade and has since developed into an All-State performer. Poduval made the Minnesota All-State Orchestra in 11th grade, where in the summer, he went to a week long camp where they played their instruments for approximately 40 hours. The All-State concert took place in February around the same time that our high school performed for MMEA (Minnesota Music Educators Association).

Poduval is also known around school as a “math wizard” or a “pure genious”. He has completed all math classes offered at the high school from Algebra II through AP Calculus II. He also made a return to the math league this year. “I rejoined Math League this year – I was in it during 8th grade – under the alias Alge-Bruh. I enjoyed solving fun and interesting math problems with Tommy Pfeifer. Tommy’s catch phrase for when we solved a particularly difficult problem was ‘Nice Solve!’.” Poduval’s performance in school lead him to an acceptance in the National Honor Society this year.

He was also in BPA (Business Professionals of America) his freshman year, and made it to state for Visual Basic Programming and Access. Visual Basic is a programming environment from Microsoft in which a programmer uses a graphical user interface (GUI) to choose and modify pre-selected sections of code written in the BASIC programming language.
One would think Roshan spends a lot of time studying; however, that is not the case. “I should probably start building some responsible study habits for college,” said Poduval. Even so, he is still a very unique and talented student who shines among the brightest here at OHS.

Poduval simply enjoys being a hardworking student, and has a passion for each of the activities he is involved in. He said,  He has set himself up for success, and has a variety of unique talents that will be beneficial to his employers someday. He currently plans on majoring in Computer Science at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.