Senior Emma Wernecke already had a regularly scheduled meeting with her counselor Connie Patterson when she heard the news.

As Wernecke walked into Patterson’s office, Patterson showered her with congratulations.  “It was the day after I had just [learned] I made it into college, so I thought she was talking about that. I replied, ‘Thanks,’ and Mrs. Patterson was confused because I didn’t know what she was talking about,” Wernecke said.

Patterson was not congratulating Werneke on her acceptance to Notre Dame but because she had been named the school’s STAR Student with an SAT score of 2,320.

The STAR Student Award goes to the senior with the highest SAT score in his or her graduating class. As the STAR Student, Wernecke then got to select the teacher she felt most impacted her high school career.

Wernecke chose Whitt Jones, her 10th grade AP World History teacher. Even though Jones currently teaches at McIntosh, Wernecke said she felt she had to chose him. “I really connected with his teaching style. Mr. Jones has been a really positive force in my life,” Wernecke said.

Jones said that he viewed this as a high honor. “It not only means you were blessed to have awesome students in your classes, but that you made an impact on at least one of them,” Jones said. “Emma is the type of student that every teacher  craves to have in their classes. I find it extremely humbling and rewarding that she would still select me despite me not being at Starr’s Mill. A lot of people forget their sophomore teachers, especially when they haven’t been around in two years.”

Wernecke also had Jones in her freshman year for Human Geography and Humanities. “I knew Emma was going to be successful at anything she did very early on in her freshman year when she was in my Humanities class,” Jones said. “Brilliance and excellence is not hard to spot.”