Sussex Central High School Student to visit White House

Mikayla Ockels is a senior at Sussex Central High School, she’s in Sussex Central’s Baccalaureate program and a member of the National Honor Society.

On top of all that she volunteers and has regular hobbies.

“I love riding horses, running I’m on the track team but to me that’s fun.”

To add on to that list, she is now one of 25 students nationwide chosen to meet with President Obama next week.

“I won for the State BioGENEius Award so I got to participate in a national competition through them and I received the Practical Impact award they actually made up an award for me it was pretty cool,” says Ockels.

At home, Ockels operates her own beekeeping, raises goats and sells pastured eggs. Ockels says an increased demand of organic eggs led her to research how to make her business more profitable. So she looked at how much feed it would take a chicken to lay a single egg.

“I was weighing chickens every morning and weighing them again every night weighing the all eggs they produced and looking at surveillance cameras seeing which chicken laid which egg so that was a long process everyday for a month,” says Ockels.

Her project eventually received a National Science Fair Award last year and she says that’s what led to her invitation to present her project at the White House.

She also has gotten the attention from Delaware colleges who want to collaborate or further her research in the field.

As for visiting the White House, she says she’s looking forward to it.

“It was really exciting its not a competition i just get to explain my project,” Ockels says “My project is done and I get to share it with people”.