 Junior Katherine Kross
(’08) of Yorktown won a $7,500 Barry Goldwater Scholarship. She is one
of 317 undergraduates from across the United States selected for the
scholarship by the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in
Education Foundation. Scholars are chosen based on academic merit from
a field of 1,110 mathematics, science and engineering students.
Koss was nominated by Chemistry professor Kathryn Layman, a former
Goldwater Scholarship winner, because of her “love of working in the
laboratory, her desire to learn and to ask questions, and her
exceptional work ethic.” Kross is a biology major who is interested in
both medicine and medical research. Established in 1986, the
scholarship program honors Sen. Barry M. Goldwater and is designed to
foster and encourage outstanding students to pursue careers in fields
of mathematics, natural sciences and engineering.
 Grant Marshall ('07)
won the
Marsho Award for the best oral presentation by an undergraduate at the
April meeting of the Mid-Atlantic Section of the American Society of
Plant Biologists. His presentation was entitled: "Characterizing the
regulation of a secreted alpha-amylase in Arabidopsis thaliana using signal
transduction mutants and Q-PCR." Grant was mentored by Elizabeth
Doyle and Jon Monroe.
 Michael J. Patterson
was selected to receive a 2006 Botanical Society of America Young
Botanist of the Year Award, and will receive a "Certificate of Special
Achievement". His name will be announced in the next issue of the
BSA Plant Science Bulletin and he will receive a one-year membership in
the BSA, including a subscription to the American Journal of Botany.
  Two
of our students were chosen to receive the
first “Ralph Wolfe Award for Excellence” at the Inaugural Meeting of
the Shenandoah Valley Student Chapter of the American Society of
Microbiologists on December 7, 2005.
Jeni Banning’s ('06) poster
entitled, “Cutaneous Bacterial Flora as a Factor in Joint Nesting
Behavior of the Four-Toed Salamander, Hemidactylium
scutatum” and Kevin Louder’s
('06) poster entitled, “Isolation and Characterization of Membrane
Proteins from Ciliated Epithelial Cells of Turkeys” were each awarded a
$75 prize to the authors. Mentors are Reid Harris and Louise
Temple, respectively.
 Two
students recently received Sigma Xi grants to fund their research: Tim Cooney ('06), working in Kevin
Simon’s lab studying the interactions among animals, microbial films
and detritus in cave streams, and Allison
Watts (06), working in Mark Hudy's lab studying fish population
structure and growth in streams.
Keith Johnson
('06) received a $500 scholarship from the Independent
Lubricant Manufacturers Association for the
fall 2005 semester. These scholarships are based on GPA and SAT
scores and are given to students pursuing undergraduate degrees in the
sciences. This is the 4th consecutive semester that
Keith has received this award.
Amir Allak ('05)
received the 2005 Phi Beta Kappa award for the outsanding honors thesis
at JMU. The title of his thesis was "Landscape Levl Airborne Mercury
Deposition in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia." (Mentor
- Dean Cocking)
Ashleigh Lane
('05) received the Marsho Award for the best
undergraduate talk at the Mid-Atlantic
Section of the American Society of Plant Biologists meeting
in Washington, DC, in April 2005. Her research was on an
alpha-amylase gene in Arabidopsis
thaliana. She fused the coding
region of the amylase gene to a GFP reporter gene and transformed
plants in
order to determine where the amylase gene was targeted within
cells. (Mentor - Liz Doyle, Monroe lab)
Leslie Taylor
('05) received a $1000 grant from Sigma Xi
for her research. Leslie
studied
how different fish species (brook trout and mottled sculpin) influence
the invertebrate community and algal abundance in streams. Her
research used artificial stream channels in which she manipulated the
presence of fish and then collected and examined the invertebrates and
algae in the
artificial streams. She collaborated on this with a graduate
student
(Beth Cheever) who presented the research at an international
conference last summer. (Mentor - Kevin Simon)
Updated 6/4/07
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