Sedona Red Rock High School senior Emily Frey has become the first student in the school’s history to earn an Advanced Placement Capstone Diploma, which she did during her junior year, and has also earned two Distinction Awards from the College Board, a standardized testing organization. 

“The AP Capstone Diploma is granted to students who earn scores of 3 or higher in AP Seminar and AP Research and on 4 additional AP exams of their choosing,” the College Board’s website states. 

The other 2024 Capstone Diploma recipients at SRRHS were Bryce Kirk, Arabella Licher, Soyoka Yabuuchi and Ashley Stewart. Frey said that she anticipates she will have completed 10 AP classes by the time she graduates in May. 

“It’s not about whether you’re naturally talented or naturally smart. It’s just if you put the effort into the classes,” Frey said. “I think all the teachers are really fair about it, and if you genuinely want to learn and do well in that class you will succeed.” 

For her AP Research course, Frey studied the ChatGPT chatbot program and the accuracy of programs used to detect the use of article intelligence algorithms. 

“Throughout my research, I found that it was pretty accurate,” Frey said. “I looked at different styles and how asking ChatGPT to write in different styles, teachers or a college professor, or with various degrees of intensity and burst-iness in writing like a human. And [ChatGPT] was pretty accurate. I think as the program has evolved, and more models and different types have come out, it’s just gotten better.” 

For AP Seminar courses, students complete two research projects over the course of a year investigating separate topics. Frey chose fentanyl usage, effects and policy and the effects of China’s one-child policy, with her choice of the latter being motivated by her adopted sister Katie Frey. 

“[Katie] was a child as a result of the one-child policy, and she got put up for adoption,” Emily Frey said. “So I was very curious about how the policy affected adoption rates.” 

Frey is currently taking AP Art, in which students create 15 original works using multiple mediums. 

“We have to connect all our pieces with a theme, so my theme’s about humans, and [we] degrade the ocean and harm it,” Frey said. “So I’m modeling different animals with the things that cause harm to them. So I was making an animal, for example, out of fishing line, because a lot of sea creatures are killed and wrapped up in fishing nets.” 

Frey will not be competing in this year’s varsity volleyball season because of an ACL injury sustained during club play in the spring but continues to coach middle-schoolers and plans to return to recreational play when she recovers. 

“Last year, during the season, there were kids on her volleyball team, who were struggling to keep their grades up so that they could participate on the team,” her father Joel Frey said. “Because Sedona has certain requirements for grades in order to play on any of the high school sports teams, she would tutor them to help them get their grades up so that they could play.” 

Frey said that she is planning a career in the medical field and completed an internship during the winter at Northern Arizona University’s Bioengineering Devices Lab in Flagstaff, where aneurysm research is taking place, and a cancer research program during the summer at the Translational Genomics Research Institute in Phoenix. 

“[Two] of my sisters are going into dental, one’s going into dental hygiene and the other one’s going to become a dentist,” Frey said. “I definitely want to do something medical, and I was thinking dental … I’ve always liked going to the dentist … and I think that career and helping people is important.” 

“I think [the AP Capstone] just shows that our school is expanding and that students do have a lot of opportunities to succeed … and that if you work hard, you can succeed,” Frey said. “Also it’s definitely cool being the first one that’s gotten it before graduating.” 

Since June 2023 Frey has been the student representative to the Sedona-Oak Creek School District Governing Board and gives a student body report at each board meeting. 

“[Frey] is an outstanding representative of our student body,” Sedona-Oak Creek School District Superintendent Tom Swaninger said. “She’s an excellent student, a good athlete and an even better person. She is humble and positive, and her future is extremely bright. I fully believe that wherever her passions take her, her talent, her initiative and her drive will take her there without question.”