BRIDGEPORT, W.Va. — Bridgeport High School senior Katie Mossburg’s election to Girl’s State Governor is the first time any student from Bridgeport High School has been elected to that position in 32 years.
She is the first student from Harrison County to hold the position since former RCB student Liz Manley in 2010.
Mossburg sat down for an in-studio interview with Mike Queen on the MetroNews-affiliated “The Mike Queen Show” on the AJR News Network to talk about how inspirational her peers at Girl’s State were–particularly outgoing Governor Bonnie Walton.
“I wanted to have the same opportunity that she did to influence people and inspire them,” Mossburg said. “Once I spent more time at Girl’s State, the program itself is so incredible that I really wanted to be able to represent it, but the very first thing that made me want to was Bonnie.”
She ran on a platform that her “federalist” party came up with: equality of grading statewide across every county school system.
“All the grading skills are just a little bit different, and because I was surrounded by the best and brightest of the girls in West Virginia, they all valued that a lot,” Mossburg said. “They really wanted equality in how our grades were treated, especially as we’re all getting ready to go off to college.”
She hasn’t made a college decision yet, but Mossburg still has plenty of time left in academia. She wants to earn a degree in biomedical engineering and eventually go off to medical school to become a surgeon specializing in oncology. She cited the importance of her teachers in her core courses (science and math) and her supplemental classes (history, english, and foreign language) for her love of academia.
“I’m really fortunate to have the teachers that I do,” she said. “I just feel confident in what they’ve taught me that I could go do whatever I wanted.”