Westmount Charter School alumna Kimberly Kavanagh, 21, is still in school and she's already making an impact on the world.

A fourth-year student at Mount Allison University in Sackville, N.B., where she's pursuing a bachelor of science degree with a major in biology and a minor in psychology, her goal is to become a physician - she recently interviewed for the University of Calgary's medical school.

And she has already been accepted to graduate school at Maastricht University in the Netherlands for a master's program in global health.

In late February, Kavanagh returned from her second trip to Honduras as a member of Global Brigades, working in a free mobile clinic that provides medical and dental care to people in rural areas. She helped doctors perform exams and medical procedures.

In another project, Kavanagh is the director of social media and youth relations for the Canadian Foundation for Youth Rights to Education, which is working with the Calgary-based Peace Through Education Initiative.

And in Sackville, Kavanagh works at the Drew Nursing Home with patients in palliative care, recording their life stories.

Kavanagh, who attended Westmount Charter School from grades 6 to 12, says the northwest Calgary school prepared her well for university.

"You learn a lot of study skills at Westmount that start when you're really young."

At Westmount, "the sheer amount of material covered stands out. They take the high school curriculum and teach it to us in 60 per cent of the time that a school normally would. For the remaining 40 per cent of the time, they expanded into the material to go in-depth.

"We learned stuff I didn't see again until second-year university.

"I really loved how it wasn't a typical lecture setting. I noticed it most in physics, because that material can be really quite dry sometimes."

For example, to learn about projectile motion they built trebuchets and had a catapult competition.

"They figured out a way to apply the concepts we were learning about," Kavanagh says. "It helps you really understand and value what you're learning. It was also cool to study radiation by microwaving stuff - it was really fun.

"It's just a wonderful school, and it's a wonderful setting to learn in, because they accept you for who you are and figure out a way to help you succeed.

That culture of success and optimizing student potential - that was the Westmount experience for me."