2017-18 Vander Velde Scholarship Winners Announced

Trinity’s size and close-knit community offer extraordinary opportunities to gain hands-on experience and develop close working relationships with fellow students and professors. The Maurice Vander Velde Junior Scholarship Award represents one of the most unique opportunities available to Trinity students.

The scholarship supports outstanding junior or senior students in collaborative research with a Trinity professor in their chosen disciplines. Serving as a colleague, not as a paid assistant, each Junior Scholar is expected to produce a scholarly product for publication at an appropriate level.

Trinity congratulates the 2017-18 Junior Scholars:

• Josiah Rosario ’18, with Dr. Kara Wolff and Dr. Jessica Clevering: “Belonging, Religious Commitment, and Ethnicity: A Quantitative Study on the Relationship between Ethnicity, Belonging, and Religious Commitment for Students of Color at Predominantly White Institutions”
• Addison Van Weelden ’18 & Jacey Dolence ’18, with Dr. Bob Boomsma: “Urban Waterways: The Effect of Water Collected From Local Waterways on Zebrafish Development”
• Leah Smit ’19 & Matthew Nolan ’18, with Dr. Sharon Robbert and Dr. Jeff Nyhoff: “Enhancing Common Freeware to Support Assessment Data Collection and Analysis”
• Matthew Koerner ’19, with Dr. Yudha Thianto: “History of Psalm Singing”
• Molly Hofman ’18, with Dr. Bill Boerman-Cornell: “Scythes and Schizophrenia: Moral Conflict in Neal Shusterman’s Writing”
• Morgan De Ruiter ’18, with Dr. Clay Carlson: “Urban Waterways: Resistance Mechanisms and Population Diversity of Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria”

Among other criteria, applicants for the Vander Velde Junior Scholar program are evaluated on their awareness of the project’s relevance, context, and background and whether their projects are ambitious but realistically achievable. They must also demonstrate strong and articulate faculty support.

Student and faculty recipients of the Vander Velde award will be invited to present their work at the Trinity Scholars Dinner in the spring semester.