Submitted Photo

The top student at Rugby High School, senior Connor Klein, has secured a spot on the honorary academic gold team for the North Dakota Association for Secondary School Principals.

The academic accolade is an honorary title given to only the top students from each school in N.D.

Klein has his sights set on big goals.

He is the son of Dale and Erin Klein, who are a water plant operator and dental hygienist, respectively. His parents are also part-time farmers.

The senior is still deciding which college he would like to continue his education. He wants to pursue a pre-medicine degree.

Klein has a rare genetic disease called hereditary pancreatitis. As a child his body was overproducing an enzyme that started to attack his pancreas. He had his pancreas removed and had ground islet cells transplanted into his liver. As a result he has Type III diabetes. Some insulin is produced in his liver but he isn’t at full capacity.

“When I was younger I had some medical issues … I want to go into the medicine side of stuff to provide affordable health care options for people because that was one of the biggest parts of my childhood – I saw a lot of people that couldn’t afford medicine and that pushed me to go into it,” he said.

Klein recognizes how difficult diabetic treatments can be to afford and has seen patients go without the life-saving treatments due to unaffordability.

Outside of school Klein maintains a full and busy schedule. He is involved with basketball, cross country, track, Science Olympiad, MathCounts, plays trumpet in the school band and maintains a job at a local pharmacy. In the rest of his free time he enjoys baking cakes which he said is another form of science.