Whiz Kid: Miller Place Senior Earns Outstanding Act of Kindness Award

Name: Lauren Grell - Age 18

School: Miller Place High School - Senior

Accomplishments: Lauren has been recognized by the College Board as an Advanced Placement (A.P.) Scholar. While at Miller Place High School, she has taken six A.P. courses and has been on the high honor roll every quarter of her high school career. She received the Award for Excellence in Spanish as a sophomore and has received the Award for General Academic Excellence each year.

Grell had watched a news story about the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, which talked about the desperate needs of the people living there. She further researched the needs of the people on this reservation, one of them being VCR tapes. She decided to do a VCR tape drive and collected over 200 tapes which she was able to send to the reservation. She was awarded her school's Outstanding Act of Kindness (O.A.K.) Award in recognition of her actions.

Lauren is the secretary of the National Honor Society and a member of the Foreign Language Honor Society for Spanish and the Service Club.

She has danced tap, lyrical and hip hop with the Marchands School of Dance since the age of two. She will be attending college in the fall, planning to major in Communication Sciences and Speech Disorders. Her career goal is to be a speech pathologist.