VanderVelde Junior Scholars Awards Announced
Five Trinity students have been named recipients of the prestigious Maurice VanderVelde Junior Scholarship Awards for 2019-20. These scholarships support 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 produces a scholarly product for publication or presentation.
The finalists for 2019-20 are:
- Emily Homman – Dr. Abbie Schrotenboer (Biology) – Tracking Water Quality from Smaller Streams to Urban Waterways
- Laura DeVries – Dr. Clay Carlson (Biology) – Gut Microbes and Brain Genes
- James Beyer & Ross Barz – Dr. Michael Bosscher and Dr. Jon VanderWoude (Chemistry) – Fluorescent Protein Lanthanide Binding Affinity
“These projects are important because they demonstrate student and professorial attention to their topics’ relevance in our time and place,” said Professor of Communication Arts Craig Mattson, Ph.D., co-director of the Honors Program. “Emily’s project, for example, along with James’s and Ross’s proposed research suggests a close attention to ecological concerns. Laura’s project builds on past VanderVelde scholars’ work as well as her own assiduous data-gathering with Dr. Carlson regarding deficits in microbiota.”
Said Assistant Professor of Sociology Lenore Knight Johnson, Ph.D., co-director of the Honors Program, “These scholars are ambitiously and realistically laying out projects that require their best efforts and their hard-won competencies as researchers. Their clear focus, their articulateness, and their commitment to collaborative research enact values deeply held in our community.”
As a community committed to scholarship, the VanderVelde Junior Scholars award helps make possible collaborative research between faculty and students that strengthens and extends our communal concentration on God’s word and God’s world.
