TEENAGER Hannah Frost is certainly living up to her name – she’s off to university to study glaciers and all things ice.

And the budding glaciologist has been awarded a boost before heading off to study the ’slow moving field’.

Hannah, 18, has received a Peel Foundation Scholarship and will study geoscience at Keele University.

The ex-St Mary's College student, from Accrington, aims to use the £500 award to participate in specialised university field trips.

Hannah hopes to then complete a masters degree and has aspirations to emigrate to Canada or Alaska to become a glaciologist.

The chosen field is the study of glaciers, or more generally ice and natural phenomena that involve ice.

She found out about the award when her student guidance mentor Diane Sellars put her name forward.After filling out an application form and attaching a written appraisal from the principal, she found out a few weeks later that she had been shortlisted.

The next step included an in-depth 45-minute interview with three members of the scholarship foundation.

Questions included what she was hoping to achieve at university, what her interests were. A short time later she received a letter to say she was successful.

She said: “I’m so grateful for the Student Guidance team at St Mary’s College who considered me for this award. Without them I wouldn’t be in the position I am in now, going to Keele University studying a subject I love.”

St Mary’s principal, Frank Dixon, said: “Hannah is a highly deserving recipient.

“She has aspirational career ambitions, achieved academic excellence and has an unselfish high regard for others.

“She has made a highly significant personal contribution to the community and St Mary’s College.”

The Peel Foundation Scholarships were established in Blackburn in 1898 as a memorial to Sir Robert Peel who was born in Oswaldtwistle and whose family established a calico printing firm in 1764.