Northside High School grad accepted to West Point

Luke Monk, a Northside High School senior, has earned his Associate of Applied Science degree in Unmanned Aerial Systems through the Western Arkansas Technical Center program at the University of Arkansas - Fort Smith. He was also recently appointed to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

The application process to West Point takes about a year to submit physical and medical exams, meet with state senators and representatives and request letters from state congressman.

Monk applied to all five service academies with letters from U.S. Rep. Steve Womack, U.S. Sen. John Boozman and U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton.

He said there is about a 6% to 7% acceptance rate.

"It's what I've been wanting since ninth grade," Monk said. "So when I found out I was accepted I was really excited."

Sen. Boozman called Monk to tell him personally that he had been accepted at West Point.

Monk has logged over 500 volunteer service hours through Boy Scouts of America, student council, Civil Air Patrol, the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps and more.

"My drive is really just to achieve the most I can," Monk said. "My goal was West Point and everything I've done is building toward getting West Point. My degree really wasn't that much more motivation to get if it was something in my way to get West Point."

Christina Williams, coordinator for public information at Fort Smith Public Schools spoke about how unique Monk's achievements are.

"Luke will be our first student who's graduating with an associate's degree on top of his diploma," she said. "It's such a huge accomplishment and something that we would love for more students to do so he's really setting the bar in that way."

Monk said it was all worth the extra effort.

"It wasn't that much more to take the extra classes on top of WATC," he said. "I think a lot of students don't know that. It really is attainable if you push yourself."

Northside principal Keri Rathbun said she's extremely proud of Monk in all his accomplishments.

"He's an outstanding young man," she said. "He has worked very hard for this. Not only does he have his associate's degree in unmanned aerial systems, I mean he really worked hard for that and he had a vision and a plan and he carried it out."

Williams said this is the goal for the school district: for students to graduate high school with concurrent credits and move to their next step.

"Luke is really a model on how to do this and so we're really excited for him," she said.

Monk is looking forward to his time at West Point and joining an exchange program to visit the service academy in Brazil. Monk already speaks Portuguese and has Brazilian roots from his mother's family.

This article originally appeared on Fort Smith Times Record: Graduate at Northside High School already has associate degree