GREENSBORO, N.C. — High school students all across North Carolina are working hard toward their goal of graduating and taking their next steps.

What You Need To Know

  •  Logan Speight is the number one ranked student in her school at The Dudley Early College Academy 

  •  Logan says a lot of our problems here on Earth can be solved with solutions that we find in space exploration

  •  Logan has received a full academic scholarship to attend Spellman College

Logan Speight and her fellow teammates are warming up before the start of track practice.

“Coming out here and trying to be better than I was last week. Guess what I love most,” Speight, a senior at Dudley Early College Academy, said.

She says track is about the pursuit of excellence.

“Every day, working towards, like, a bigger goal. Better performance. Something better than I was yesterday,” Speight said.

And, her striving to be better everyday has paid off, as she’s the No. 1 ranked student in her school. She has a 4.6 GPA, and she’s the captain of the jump team. She says her future goals help keep her going.

"I know the dreams that I have, I need to get an education to achieve them. And then it's kind of like the same thing for track, like, the goals I set for myself is what keeps me coming back to practice. And I also just love it,” Speight said.

In college, she plans to major in aero-space engineering. She has received a full academic scholarship to Spellman College in Atlanta, Georgia.

"Favorite subject has always been science. I like explosions. So, I really like chemistry. And in middle school we had a science fair, and instead of doing, like, a normal science project, I made a potato cannon and then set a little bit of a soccer field on fire by accident when I was testing it out. It was OK," Speight said.

She says what's in space, she feels can help here on Earth.

"I've always thought that a lot of our problems, like here on Earth can be solved with solutions that we find in space exploration. So, that's why I've always been interested in it,” Speight said.

Greensboro County Commissioner Frankie T. Jones Jr. presented Logan with a $1,000 scholarship at the Dudley Early College Academy, surrounded by her family and mentors.

“Whenever you see our students, our youth excelling, it's an opportunity to recognize them for their achievements. So oftentimes we tend to focus on negativity. But when you have these bright and shiny moments when we can recognize our students who are doing so much good, it just helps me in terms of giving me extra motivation to continue to do the work that I do,” Jones said.