When Mikayla Powell was born, her parents were still kids themselves. “My mom and dad were just teenagers. There are pictures from their high school graduation with me in it,” she says.

Allyson Ratz, 17, has always been interested in how things are put together. Whether it’s the individual strokes of one of her award-winning pencil drawings, how the lines of a classic rock song can tell a story of social change, or how the release of chemicals inside the brain can influence a…