She’s a National Merit Scholar, serves as a student representative on the Kingsley school board, holds a cumulative 4.0 GPA, and is ranked first in her class at Kingsley High School. By the end of the summer, though, rising senior Anna Bauer will have her most impressive credential yet: a Private Pilot’s License (PPL).

Bauer is currently in the midst of an eight-week Commander Naval Air Forces (CNAF) Flight Academy program at Elizabeth City State University in North Carolina. Introduced just a few years ago, that summer program offers high-level aviation training to a select number of students enrolled in Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps programs at high schools across the country. Bauer is one of just 14 teens nationwide selected for this year’s Naval programs, which will get her 55 hours of flight training, five college credits, and a PPL before she heads back to school in the fall.

The program is a big deal. All student “selects” – referred to as “cadets” once they are in training – received full-ride scholarships from the Naval STEM Coordination Office and the Office of Naval Research, covering not just tuition and flight hours, but also round-trip airfare and room and board. “At a cost of approximately $26,000 per student, this program is a life-changing opportunity with real career implications,” reads an application document provided to The Ticker by the Navy. “If your student is not 100 percent committed to the program, we cannot afford to take them.”

“I can tell you that many of the students that we’ve had in the past have gone on to the [military] academies,” says Navy Commander Chris “Wildcat” Pratt when asked about those “real career implications.” For instance, of the 2022 CNAF class – which had 20 total cadets – seven are training to be Navy pilots, four to become Air Force pilots, one to fly as a Marine Corps pilot, two to be civilian pilots, and one to join the Space Force. “These cadets are currently all in college working toward achieving their dreams,” Pratt tells The Ticker.

For her part, Bauer is interested in enrolling at the Naval Academy as her next step after high school.

“It’s definitely going to be difficult, but I feel like it’s doable, especially after this program,” she says. “I feel like this gets me just a little bit closer to that.”

“Just a little bit closer” may be an overstatement. Prior to this summer, Bauer – like most high school students – had never been behind the controls of an aircraft. She applied to the CNAF program because her JROTC gunnery sergeant recommended it, and because the coursework appealed to her STEM-focused brain.

“I am very science and math wired, and the concept of flying a tin can 5,000 feet above the ground is very interesting to me,” she laughs. “It immediately sparked my interest that I knew I had to apply.”

Still, Bauer admits that all the academic interest in the world doesn’t make that first flight any less nerve-racking.

“The first time I was in the air, God bless my certified flight instructor (CFI), he was probably more scared than I was,” Bauer says. “He would give me the controls, and I could barely fly straight or level. I was terrified. I was like, ‘There’s the ground, we’re in the sky, we’re flying with Bernoulli's principle; this is just all-around insane!’ I found myself thinking: ‘How am I going to be able to pass a check in eight weeks?’”

Thanks to a rigorous schedule, though, Bauer says she’s quickly come into her own as a pilot. In a typical day, she’s up at 6:30am, at the airport by 8a for two hours of flight time, in study hall for two hours before lunch, back in the air for another two hours, and then back to campus for two more hours of studying. A few weeks into the program, all that hard work is paying off.

“I actually soloed by myself last week, and the difference [since my first flight] is amazing,” Bauer says. “The confidence that I feel, but also the confidence of my CFI to write the endorsement for me to go up in a plane by myself, it’s just incredible.”

All that time in the air has also given Bauer a new level of appreciation for the thing that got her interested in aviation in the first place: the National Cherry Festival Air Show, and specifically the death-defying aerobatic feats of the Navy’s own Blue Angels.

“You see the Blue Angels as a kid and it really has a ‘wow’ factor. But then as you grow up, you get even more interested. It’s not just, ‘Oh, this is pretty.’ It’s, ‘How does that work? How do you do this?’” Bauer says. “And now, after learning how to pilot a plane, what the Blue Angels do is even more amazing to me. When I was little, I just figured, ‘Oh, there’s a button they can push and the plane flies itself.’ But my plane doesn’t have autopilot. It’s all about the pilot, and the amazing feats that these people do. And it's dangerous and complicated, but that's part of the beauty.”

Bauer adds: “The air show definitely helped me recognize, initially, that [aviation] was really cool. If I didn’t have exposure to that, I probably would have been a little bit more hesitant to do this program.”

Pictured: Bauer poses in front of a Cessna 172 Skyhawk following her first solo flight last week.