Always striving for the impossible, ACP students continue to challenge themselves by searching for opportunities to develop their skills. Self-improvement is a significant factor in our community, and students practice it by pursuing great opportunities, allowing them to apply their skills in real-world settings and deepen their knowledge. A great example of ACP students’ success and excellence is the prestigious KEYS internship, which prepares high school students to work in laboratory settings involving bioscience, biostatistics, and others. Junior Tara Nukala participated in the internship, and she expressed, “Though my passion has always been science, I hadn’t yet been put in a position to work in a lab other than at ACP. STEM at ACP sparked my interest and desire to experiment in a higher-level laboratory setting. My specific lab will be centered around slowing the process of aging, therefore, delaying the onset of diseases that occur due to it.”

Enhancing students’ skills through real-world experiences of STEM testing, the KEYS internship allows students to master their specific practice and helps them better understand their role in a laboratory setting. Tara mentioned, “The skills learned in the lab will help me with any future research I do and being able to communicate with any professors or supervisors. All of this will be useful in my professional career and my interactions with other people in the future.” An opportunity as prestigious as the KEYS internship has intense competition to ensure the students who earn it can fully commit to the program. Competition such as this requires more preparation on the subject to be set to participate in the lab experience. When I asked Tara to describe her preparation for the internship, she stated, “Before the internship starts in the summer, we have a series of pre-KEYS assignments to become better prepared for the experience. Additionally, I’m researching the specific lab I’ll be working with to familiarize myself with the terminology, and I have taken more extracurricular roles in the scientific field.”

The KEYS internship program will greatly benefit the students who have been selected to participate in it. Congratulations to juniors Tara Nukala, Reese Bermeo, and Jishnu Nayak for being part of such a distinguished and esteemed program. We cannot wait to see the great things you will accomplish due to the program and the countless opportunities you will receive in the future. Thank you for being a remarkable inspiration to everyone at ACP! Go Knights!