Elizabeth Brewer will be the first member of her family, including her mother and father, to go to college - Harvard University no less - and she's still in high school.
Brewer, 17, a junior at Granite High School, is one of 1,000 high school students across the United States to be selected to attend a two-month course at Harvard, in Cambridge, Mass., from June 24 to Aug. 18. She plans to study journalism and mathematics during the special summer program, which will be worth both high school and college credits. She has a 3.9 average.Brewer, a daughter of Jane and Randy Brewer, has four younger sisters and two younger brothers. She says she loves to write and hopes to become a journalist after she graduates from college.
Brewer is a student body officer - one of three senators from her junior class - and is news editor this year and will be editor in chief next year of her school newspaper, the Granitian. She belongs to her school's chapter of Distributive Education Clubs of America, DECA, and works part time at a McDonald's restaurant near her home.
She is used to working. Her father owns a retail tire company where she has worked summers and through the school year for four years, and her mother operates a ceramic and wood art business in their home. She she has helped with that business, too.
But Jane Brewer said what's most significant is that neither she nor her husband went to college. "So Elizabeth is the first in our family to attend one. She is setting a fine example for the rest of our children," she said.