Whiz Kid: Nicola Gallagher

Nicola Gallagher is currently the valedictorian of the Class of 2011. While maintaining a vigorous course load. Gallagher is a member of the National Honor Society, the National World Language Honor Society (of which she is the president) and the National Art Honor Society.

With all these societies, She partakes in numerous community service activities. Gallagher is also very active in her church's youth group.

"Each year we go on a mission trip in the summer, and for the past three years I have gone to Washington, D.C., Camden, N.J. and this summer we are going to Chicago," she said.

At these places, the youth group helps with home repairs, works at a homeless shelters, working in soup kitchens and talking with people who are sick. Gallagher said she loves helping those who are less fortunate and getting other people to help out. She said, " If I can make others do the same, it is a great feeling."

Gallagher also has a passion for art and loves to paint. Her  favorite class in high school was AP Art History, in which she was able to learn about the great artists of the past. Gallagher is the current Editor-In-Chief of the Literary Arts Magazine, Mirage.

Mirage actually did an interesting fundraiser this year known as Nicola-grams.

"Students could purchase a Nicola-Gram for $2 (this was during the holiday season) and I would go to their friends class and deliver a message for them, and sing a song / dance to a song of their choosing," Gallagher said. "We raised over $200. This along with our first annual Valentine's Day Love Film Festival has allowed us to have enough money to have color for the first time in our upcoming 2011 edition of Mirage."

In sports, Gallagher is also a varsity fall and spring athlete: a girls soccer starter and a track competitor. She participated in each sport all four year of high school and is captain of her teams. Her track team is the girls 4x100 BHS record holding team.

Gallagher, along with Chris Valenti of Bethel, won the CAS-CIAC Scholar Athlete Award from the Connecticut Association of Schools & the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference. Each school names two students who excell academically and athletically.

She was also a finalist at the 2010 Science Horizons Fair. Her project tested how natural inhibitors affected the corrosion of standardized steel. At the fair she won the Yale Science & Engineering Association Award for Most Outstanding Exhibit and the ASM Materials Education Foundation Award for Most Outstanding Exhibit in Materials Science.

Gallagher is planning on attending college to study liberal arts or business, but has yet to make a decision on a school.