Three Furman seniors, three graduates receive NSF Graduate Research Fellowships

GREENVILLE, SC – April 26, 2012 – The National Science Foundation has selected three Furman University seniors and three Furman graduates as 2012 recipients of highly competitive Graduate Research Fellowships.

Five Furman chemistry majors, past and present, were selected for thehonor, including 2012 graduating seniors Annelise Gorensek of Aiken,Megan Novak of Naperville, Ill., and James Wade of Elgin. Chemistrygraduates Erin Gray ’11 of Tellico Plains, Tenn., and Natalie Gruenke’11 of Cincinnati, Ohio also received fellowships, as did Hillary Mullet’10 of Roanoke, Va., a graduate of the psychology program.

The National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships aredesigned to recognize scientific achievement at the undergraduate leveland professional promise in graduate school for students pursuingresearch-based master’s and doctoral degrees at accredited nationalinstitutions.  Each Fellow receives a three-year annual stipend of$30,000, an additional $10,500 cost-of-education allowance, andopportunities for international research and professional development.

Mullet is currently studying cognitive psychology in the doctoralprogram at Duke University, while Gray is a first-year graduate studentat Princeton University, where she is studying chemical synthesis.Gruenke is a second-year graduate student at Northwestern Universitywhere she is studying chemical structure, dynamics, and mechanism.

After earning her bachelor’s degree in chemistry in May, Gorensekwill pursue her doctorate in biochemistry at the University of NorthCarolina-Chapel Hill. Novak will study cancer biology at NorthwesternUniversity, and Wade will study analytical chemistry at the Universityof Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

“It is a remarkable accomplishment for a liberal arts college ofFurman’s size to have six current or former students to receive GraduateResearch Fellowships in the same year, and the fact that five of thesestudents were majors in chemistry is especially unique,” said Dr. JohnWheeler, director of the Office of Integrative Research in the Sciences.

“We think the best way to teach science is to do science withstudents,” said Dr. Lon Knight, chair of Furman’s Chemistry Department.“It’s a testament to the experience they had at Furman.”

Furman students enjoy tremendous mentoring opportunities with facultyscientists, engaging in hands-on cutting-edge research during theschool year and over the summer in small groups. Four of the six Furmanawardees also participated as Research Fellows under Furman’sHHMI-BRIDGES program sponsored by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

“Furman’s HHMI Fellows program follows a unique early and often modeldesigned to give rising sophomores an extensive year-long researchexperience. With this outstanding preparation, it is no coincidence thatthese students are able to establish a remarkable record of researchaccomplishment at Furman that is recognized by NSF,” Wheeler said.

The NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program is the country’s oldestgraduate fellowship program that directly supports graduate students invarious science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields. Since1952, the Foundation has funded more than 46,500 Graduate ResearchFellowships out of more than 500,000 applicants. More than 30 of themhave become Nobel laureates and more than 440 have become members of theNational Academy of Sciences. The Graduate Research Fellowship programhas a high rate of doctoral degree completion, with more than 70 percentof students completing their doctorates within 11 years.