From staff reports
The nonprofit Pat Conroy Literary Center has added two new student interns from Pat Conroy’s alma mater, Beaufort High School, Alisha Arora and Millie Bennett.
The Conroy Center’s internship program was created by Holland Perryman, now Beaufort High student body president and also the first student intern of the statewide Friends of South Carolina Libraries. Conroy Center interns are mentored by executive director Jonathan Haupt and assist in both in-person and virtual public educational programming for writers, readers, students, and teachers, while learning about writing, literature, marketing, and arts leadership.
Arora (above) is a senior, captain of the girls varsity tennis team and vice president of the National Honor Society. Raised in the Lowcountry, Arora is also a member of the Spanish National Honor Society and the Interact Club.
An accomplished AP and Honors student in numerous STEM courses, with an emphasis on the biological sciences, she is the recipient of Academic Excellent Awards. Arora has been a dancer since 2006, and has been dancing competitively since 2013. She volunteers as an assistant teacher for younger peers at her dance studio.
A voracious reader, Arora also volunteers her time at the main branch of the Beaufort County Library System. In addition, she coaches younger players at a summer tennis clinic and assists in her family’s local business.
Beaufort native Emily “Millie” Bennett (above) is a junior, a dedicated student in the AP Capstone Program and a member of the Interact Club (where she enjoys assisting with the CAPA Ghost Tours and community cleanup projects). Bennett is also a founding member of the BHS chapter of Letters for Rose, an organization dedicated to reducing loneliness in nursing homes and assisted living residents during the COVID-19 pandemic through letters and artwork.
In the eighth grade, Bennett was designated a South Carolina Junior Scholar by the S.C. Department of Education. In 2020, she was selected for the S.C. Governor’s School for the Arts & Humanities Summer Program for Visual Arts, and in 2021, she participated in the Savannah College of Art and Design Summer Sessions for Visual Art, Animation, and Character Development. Her many talents include drawing, painting, and digital art, which complement her passion for storytelling rooted in a thoughtful historical perspective.
Bennett is also an accomplished actress and singer, having performed in multiple Beaufort Middle School plays (including the role of Snoopy in You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown).
