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Another example of young people making a difference in the fight against cancer! Thank you Batavia High School Honor Society for working toward a world without cancer!

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Letchworth student makes elite academic list

GAINESVILLE -- One's tempted to ask what Katherine Konvinse can't do.

Last year, while other teens were working summer jobs, the self-effacing high schooler was researching stem cell cancers at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute. She's graduating this month at the top of her class, having the highest grade point average ever at Letchworth Central School.

Modest and pleasant, Konvinse, 18, is among 25 students across Western New York named to Business First magazine's 2009 All-Academic First Team.

"It was exciting," she said Monday. "It was nice that after so many years of work you get recognized."

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Konvinse was selected after an arduous process, starting when she was nominated by her district. Her grades, class ranking, SAT scores, and school activities were weighed, before she was selected into a pool of 100 students.

Then those students -- each with impressive accomplishments -- were winnowed down into the first and second teams, plus those selected for special mention. Konvinse was the only high schooler in Genesee, Orleans or Wyoming Counties to make the first or second teams this year.

But one shouldn't mistake her accomplishment for pure academics.

Although she has an astonishing 102.252 average, she's involved at her school in a big way. She's treasurer of the school band, vice president of Letchworth's National Honor Society, and math team president -- representing her school in the state finals.

She also participated in the Chemistry Olympiad, Physics Olympics, drama club, Big Buddy program, track and swimming.

"I also coach the younger kids and teach them how to swim through the Letchworth Splash," she said. "We have a Sources of Strength suicide prevention program that I do too.

"Most of it is it's interesting and I like it," she continued. "Occasionally I do something because I know it will help me get into college."

Konvinse said she's in Sources of Strength because it's important to keep in touch with younger people, given the suicide rates. She added, laughing, that she's math team president because she's extremely nerdy -- though her teachers wholeheartedly discount the nerdy part.

Her work last summer included the Roswell Park internship, in which she and other students researched non-embryotic stem cell cancers. She spent her whole summer in a lab and helped write a grant application besides.

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