MLive New Article Isaac Mekaru
Photo by Drew Travis atravis@mlive.com
By Melissa Frick | mfrick@mlive.com
GRAND RAPIDS, MI – When schools shut down and classes went virtual at the start of COVID-19 in March 2020, most teenagers used the break from in-person classes to relax and unwind as they finished up the last few weeks of their school year.
Not Isaac Mekaru.
Then a freshman at Forest Hills Northern, Mekaru spent his free time in the beginning of the pandemic teaching himself an entire Algebra II textbook, so that he could skip ahead a level in math to take Pre-Calculus his sophomore year. “When quarantine hit, I was like, ‘Alright, I don’t know what else to do,’” recalled Mekaru, who is now in his senior year at FHN. “I guess it didn’t occur to me that I could play video games or just sit around. By the third week of quarantine, I was halfway done with Algebra II.”
That kind of motivation and hunger for learning is something Mekaru’s teachers say they rarely see in many high schoolers. Jake Kelly, a math teacher at FHN, said Mekaru has exhibited a “college-ready” level of academic maturity and independence since the day he met him.
“Coming out of eighth grade, he just had a personality of, ‘I’m going to learn this material for its intrinsic value – I’m not going to learn the material for a grade, I’m not going to learn the material because my mom or dad wants me to do well, I’m going to learn the material because I see the inherent worth,’” Kelly said.
Mekaru is this year’s recipient of the Roger B. Chaffee Scholarship award, which is awarded each year to one outstanding Kent County high schooler with an interest in entering the field of STEM (science, technology, engineering and math). The 2022 winner was also a Forest Hills Northern student, Wayne He. The scholarship, which is $3,500 plus commemorative gifts, was started more than 40 years ago to honor Grand Rapids native, Navy Lieutenant Commander Roger B. Chaffee. He perished with astronauts Edward H. White II and Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom in the Apollo 1 spacecraft flash fire during a launch pad test at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Jan. 27, 1967. Dave Pequet, Roger B. Chaffee Scholarship Fund treasurer and nephew of the late astronaut, said Mekaru stood out as a clear winner for this year’s award because of his well-rounded academic transcript that included a 4.294 grade point average and AP-level classes not just in the sciences, but also in English.
“One thing that we found that was interesting with Isaac this year is, typically the student of this caliber that we select, they’ll have taken a lot of AP courses, and they’re almost always in the physics and science area,” Pequet said. “But Isaac was taking AP in both physics and English Literature.”
“That was when we were like, ‘Wow, this kid really is balanced.’ I can’t recall seeing that too many times, if at all, over the years.’”
In addition to maintaining a high grade point average, Mekaru is involved in marching band, National Honor Society, Science Olympiad, rowing and club soccer.
Mekaru will graduate from FHN this spring and plans to attend the University of Michigan in the fall. He intends to study mechanical engineering through the UM College of Engineering, he told MLive/The Grand Rapids Press. “I’ve always liked building things,” Mekaru said in an interview Monday, April 24. “Being able to create something and bring something into the world is satisfying.”
Someday, Mekaru hopes to work for NASA or another space company, and have a career involved in space – whether that be building rovers or Mars habitats, or working on space shuttles that could eventually travel the solar system.
“I think it’d be cool to work with space,” Mekaru said. “I think it’s kind of the next horizon of humanity.”
On Thursday, April 27, Mekaru will be honored during a 6 p.m. awards dinner at the Grand Rapids Public Museum hosted by the Roger B. Chaffee Scholarship Fund. The museum named its planetarium after Roger Chaffee in 1967. Grand Rapids native Brent Bos, senior research physicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, is the keynote speaker for the Chaffee event.
Bos will also conduct sessions with school and college science students during his two-day visit and give a free presentation, ”My Trips Through the Solar System – 25 Years of Planetary Exploration and Discovery,” on Wednesday, April 26 at 7:30 p.m. in the museum’s Meijer Theater.