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September 23, 1999
WRIGHT STATE GRADUATES WIN
FELLOWSHIPS FROM U.S. EPA
Two recent Wright State University graduates are already "stars" in the academic world. Due to the research they conducted while graduate students at WSU, Audrey C. Hatch and David C. Sternberg have won three-year fellowships from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to continue their studies at the doctoral level.
Hatch, a 1997 master's degree recipient currently studying at Oregon State University in Corvallis, Ore., and Sternberg, a 1999 master's graduate continuing his studies at Miami University in Oxford, each received three-year fellowships in ecology from the EPA's Science to Achieve Results (STAR) program.
Hatch and Sternberg were two of only 10 ecology fellowship winners nationwide from over 100 applicants. Wright State was the only university to have more than one winner in the category. The fellowships, worth $25,000 annually for three years, include a stipend and funding for supplies.
The success of their former students reflects the quality of the university's environmental sciences programs, according to their advisors.
"The fellowship is based largely on what they've done as opposed to what they're going to be doing," says Dan Krane, associate professor of biological sciences. "It says a lot about the quality of our program."
"It (the fellowship judging) really looks at what they've written up," adds Allen Burton, professor of environmental science and director of the Institute for Environmental Quality. "Did they perform well in the past and do they have a solid proposal that has a good experimental design to it?"
Hatch is continuing the research she began at Wright State, studying the causes of deformities in frogs. She and Burton have collaborated on four articles, an outstanding accomplishment for a second-year doctoral student. "Without a doubt she was the best student I ever had," Burton adds.
Sternberg's work is equally impressive. "David's been working on the impact of pollution on the genetic diversity of populations," said Krane. This involves collecting crayfish from streams and studying their DNA profiles. The profiles tend to be similar at polluted sites, but different at non-polluted sites.
Hatch's and Sternberg's work is typical of the cutting-edge, interdisciplinary research in the environmental sciences program. Burton calls it "good science that has an application. The reviewers are reading something that has good basic science in it, but has an application that everybody can relate to."
Krane believes the STAR fellowships will jump-start the winner's careers. "It's very prestigious, and it really gets these students off to a great start," he says. "It gives them an admittance card into a network."
According to Burton, the pair also shows that Wright State is producing "star" graduates in the environmental sciences. "They are getting a good foundation in our master's program to do really high-quality Ph.D. work."
