Alena McQuarter is a 14-year-old college student who is making history.
She is the youngest person to intern at NASA, the youngest Black person to get accepted to medical school, and the founder of Brown STEM Girl, an organization for girls of color who want to study science, technology, engineering, and math.
What We Know:
- She graduated from high school at 12 years old.
- She is a senior at Arizona State University and will graduate in December with a bachelor’s degree in biomedical biological sciences with a minor in global health.
- She is expected to graduate with a master’s in biological sciences in May.
- She interned at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
- She is the founder of Brown STEM Girl, an organization for girls of color who want to study science, technology, engineering, and math.
Here are some of her accomplishments in more detail:
- Alena graduated from high school at 12 years old with a 4.0 GPA. She was also the valedictorian of her class.
- She interned at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, in 2021. She worked on a project to develop new ways to use robots to explore Mars.
- Alena was accepted to the University of Alabama’s Heersink School of Medicine in 2022. She is the youngest Black person to ever be admitted to the school.
- Alena started the Brown STEM Girl organization in 2020. The organization is designed to inspire girls of color to study science, technology, engineering, and math.
- Alena is passionate about research and wants to use her skills to help people. She is currently working on a project to develop a new treatment for ovarian cancer.
Alena is an inspiration to us all. She shows us that anything is possible if we set our minds to it. She is a role model for girls of color everywhere and she is sure to achieve great things in the future.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Texas teen was told girls of color couldn’t do well. She’s graduating college at 14.
