Top 10 Spotlight: Ashley Mares Has Concerns for Our Planet

Ashley Mares has a genuine concern for the future of our planet and wishes that everyone would be as environmentally conscious as she is.
“The environment has influenced me more in the way I think,” said Mares, one of the Top 10 students in the Los Fresnos High School Class of 2015. “Our planet is not renewable, it’s here and whatever we do to our planet is going to affect us for the rest of our lives.”

Mares is leader of the country’s Go Green initiative that is about helping schools create a campus-wide culture of conservation.

“I’m interested in finding ways to make things less expensive,” she said. “For example, solar panels are a good energy source. But it’s too expensive right now that people don’t buy them because they don’t know how it will benefit them.”

Mares, the daughter of Luis Mares and Jessica Ramirez, has been part of beach cleanups and highway cleanups as well. “We’ve been wanting to do a Highway 100 cleanup in our National Honor Society. Hopefully we can still do one before the end of the year.”

NHS is just one of several organizations Mares has been involved in. She has been involved in UIL, Masterminds, Volunteer Income Tax Assistance Program and others, but her favorite has been Health Occupations Students of America (HOSA).

“I love HOSA,” Mares said. “I’ve been most involved with that group. HOSA just opens your mind to so many new things. It’s an amazing organization.”

Mares was more involved in clubs through her junior year, but has scaled back for her senior year.

“I realized that I had to stop getting involved,” she said. “College planning happened. I had more AP classes. I’ve always taken AP classes, but it’s nothing I can’t manage.”

Mares treats the Advanced Placement classes like they are part of every student’s regular routine.

“My mindset is that AP classes are something you have to do,” she said. “If you look at your AP classes, and think they are challenging, that’s what your mind is going to think – like it’s too hard for me. I think of AP classes as a normal class and instead of thinking that they are higher-level classes.”

Mares plans to take her continue her studies at The University of North Texas in Denton. She has been accepted into the Emerald Eagle Scholars Program, a scholarship that will pay for tuition and fees for the next four years.

She plans to pursue an Environmental Engineering degree at UNT.

“I’ve become super green with our environment,” she said. “And that’s ironic because now I’m going to a college whose mascot is the Mean Green.”