Online School Enables Student to Reach for the Stars

Linae Larson of Richfield has been with Minnesota Connections Academy since Kindergarten. Her parents enrolled her in the online school because she has significant medical issues and the online school provided Linae the schedule flexibility to manage her illness without falling behind in school. As it would turn out, that schedule flexibility also enabled her to thrive academically as she can work at her own pace. As her mother Kelly-Anne explained it, MNCA “has kept Linae cognitively challenged on the days she isn’t medically challenged.”

Kelly-Anne noted that through elementary and middle school Linae was very creative and her daughter excelled in writing. However, something changed when she entered high school and Linae began studying scientific concepts and had a real interest and aptitude for astronomy and astrophysics.

Linae is currently a sophomore at MNCA and she continues to challenge herself academically by taking advanced level classes. For her junior and senior years, the 15-year-old plans to dual enroll in MNCA and a local university through Minnesota’s Postsecondary Enrollment Options (PSEO) program. As Linae plans to attend the University of Minnesota and major in Astrophysics with a minor in Astrobiology, this will give her a 2-year head start.

Her passion for Astronomy was further boosted by a recent seven-day trip to Washington D.C. where she visited John’s Hopkins University, the Goddard Space Flight Center, the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) and NASA’s headquarters. The trip was made possible by Wishes and More, a local non-profit that provides children facing chronic and terminal illnesses with extraordinary experiences.

One of the highlights of Linae’s visit was meeting with the team working on NASA’s Dragonfly, a planned spacecraft and mission that will send a mobile robotic rotorcraft lander to Titan, the largest moon of Saturn, to study prebiotic chemistry and extraterrestrial habitability at various locations. Linae has been following the astrophysics community and its analysis of this mission for quite a while. Kelly-Anne said she’ll never forget Linae’s excitement when she was able to interact with the team behind the mission.

Last year Linae also entered a national science competition called the Break Through Junior Challenge were she created a 3-minute video taking a complex scientific concept and breaking it down to more simplified terms. In her video she explains Hawking Radiation from Black Holes.