Dundee-Crown High School senior Grace Bourbon is set to receive her Gold Award April 27 at the Girl Scouts of Northern Illinois annual meeting in DeKalb.
That organization’s highest honor is just one of the accomplishments, accolades and activities on the 17-year-old’s growing resume.
“If you don’t sleep a lot you have a lot of room to do things,” Bourbon said of how she fits everything into a busy schedule.
Bourbon’s Gold Award is for a project she completed in October for the Dundee Township Historical Society. She set up a computer with information to help people do online genealogical research. Along with that, she put together documents people can use to help them trace their roots offline too.
Bourbon is a member of Girl Scout Troop 1032 in West Dundee and has been since kindergarten. She’s also a member of Boy Scout Troop 9111 in Elgin.
“I joined in 2019 after they started letting in girls. My two younger brothers (Joshua,15, and Henry, 10) have been involved with Boy Scouts. I would go to their meetings and help out, so I was considered an honorary scout anyway,” Bourbon said.
She earned the rank of Eagle Scout after completing a service project in December 2022.
“I made crate beds and toys for Bark of an Angel Dog Rescue in Algonquin,” Bourbon said.
After attending a shelter adoption event, Bourbon and her family ended up bringing home a Labrador-mix puppy they named Nox, the Latin word for night. Nox, now 2 years old, gets along well with the 4-year-old shelter dog the Bourbons adopted during the COVID-19 pandemic and named Spero — the Latin word for hope.
Bourbon also put in the time necessary to receive gold certification in the Congressional Award program for youth in late 2022. The work included completing hundreds of hours of work in voluntary public service, personal development, physical fitness, expedition and exploration.
If that weren’t enough, Bourbon is a member of the National Honor Society and has been on the Dundee-Crown High School track and field team all four of her high school years.
She says she’s not the best of athletes but enjoys doing hurdles, the long jump and the occasional pole vault.
Bourbon and some friends are also part of the “Girl Up” effort at Dundee-Crown. Girl Up is a United Nations program to promote gender equality, Bourbon said. Toward that, the Dundee-Crown group is working on putting together an event of some sort to happen before the school year ends in May, she said.
Adding to her busy schedule, Bourbon also teaches swim lessons for fourth and fifth graders at the Dundee Township Park District pool in the Rakow Center in Carpentersville. She’s also planning to work as a lifeguard this summer at Dolphin Cove Family Aquatic Center next to the Rakow Center.
“I like kids,” Bourbon said.
As for the fall, Bourbon said she’s still deciding where she wants to attend college. An advance placement student in chemistry, calculus and research, Bourbon said she has known what she wants to study since the seventh grade.
“I want to study biochemical engineering then work in prosthetic development,” Bourbon said.
She came to that choice after learning about a professor Max Ortiz-Catalan. Ortiz-Catalan is the director of the Center for Bionics and Pain Research in Sweden and oversees neural prosthetics research with the Bionics Institute in Australia.
“The work he does is super cool,” Bourbon said.
Mike Danahey is a freelancer.
