She Grew Up Going to Kīlauea to Photograph Eruptions. Now the Kaʻū Senior Is Taking That Same Sense of Wonder to Okinawa.
One of 42 public high school students selected for the 2026 Hawaiʻi Sister-State Study Tours.
Student Snapshot
Name: Megan Pierpont
Preferred Name: Megan
School: Kaʻū High School (Kaʻū High & Pāhala Elementary)
Grade: 12th (Senior)
Home Community: Kaʻū, Hawaiʻi Island (Big Island) — rural district near Kīlauea
Delegation: Okinawa
Travel Dates: March 14–25/26, 2026
Focus Interests / Extracurriculars: Girls Flag Football Team Captain; National Honor Society President (member since sophomore year, regular community service); directed science research class (studying coffee plant fungus); photography (Kīlauea eruptions, native wildlife, Hawaiian birds); art (black ink watercolor, specializes in native Hawaiian species); sells products at markets with her mother since age 13; attended first all-girls flag football camp in Pennsylvania; selected for and attended West Point's summer leadership program
Career Aspirations: Biochemistry — she names this explicitly and connects it directly to her current coursework and her love of science since childhood
Why They Were Selected
Megan is a senior from one of the most rural, underserved communities in the state, and she has built an extraordinary record there — not despite her circumstances, but because of the values they instilled in her. Her mother worked double ten-hour shifts as a single parent to get her family to Hawaiʻi. Her biological father taught her to love nature and enjoy life before he died of cancer in the years since his 2021 diagnosis. She carries all of that into her work: the research class, the West Point program, the flag football captaincy, the ink drawings of native birds. This trip is her senior capstone — and she knows it.
What They're Excited About
Connecting with people in her tour group; experiencing a new culture and country; being pushed out of her comfort zone; making connections she'll never forget
She Grew Up Going to Kīlauea to Photograph Eruptions. Now the Kaʻū Senior Is Taking That Same Sense of Wonder to Okinawa.
Megan Pierpont grew up learning to pay attention. Her father took her to Yellowstone, Rocky Mountain National Park, and Mount Rushmore before they moved apart — and taught her, as she puts it, how to enjoy life while she still had so much of it to live, and how to appreciate nature. She carried those lessons to Kaʻū, where she now photographs eruptions at the national park down the road, paints native Hawaiian birds in black ink watercolor, and researches the fungus attacking Big Island coffee plants in her directed science class. This spring, the Kaʻū High senior is taking that same careful attention to Okinawa as a PAAC Sister-State Student Ambassador — her final act before graduation.
Megan is one of the most accomplished students in Kaʻū's small, rural community. She's captain of the girls flag football team, president of the National Honor Society chapter, and a regular community service participant. This past summer she was selected for West Point's summer leadership program, spending a week on campus learning what it takes to lead under pressure. She's been selling products at markets with her mother since she was thirteen. She wants to work in biochemistry — and she's been building toward it one science class, one research project, and one hard-won opportunity at a time.
Megan was selected because she understands what it means to earn something. Her mother worked double ten-hour shifts as a single parent to get their family from Colorado to Hawaiʻi. Megan grew up watching that and learned that with hard work, almost anything is possible. Now she's a senior in one of the most remote districts in the state, and she has made it to West Point, to flag football nationals, and to Okinawa. The ʻāina shaped her. She plans to give back to it.
"This trip would be a perfect capstone for me to showcase all that I have learned throughout high school and my life." — Megan Pierpont, Kaʻū High School, Class of 2026
When Megan returns to Kaʻū from Okinawa, she'll graduate with an understanding of the world that very few students from her district have ever had the chance to build. For a community known for its farmers and its down-to-earth people, that kind of global perspective — rooted in love for the land — is exactly what the next generation needs.
