New & Noteworthy

Spring 2013

• Austin Peay recently announced the 10 recipients of the Reagan Scholarship for the coming academic year.  Five of the recipients are PELP students.  They are Breanne Campos, Veronica Cordova, Hannah Evans, Kelsey Smith, and Diana Trinh.  This scholarship was established last year by Dr. Carmen Reagan, a former dean and professor who worked for many years at Austin Peay, to recognize and support young women leaders.
• Hudson Bilbrey, a PELP sophomore and physics major, will participate in an REU this summer at Vanderbilt University that will focus on the phenomenon of neutrino oscillations.
• Caitlin Nelms, a PELP senior and psychology major, will attend the University of Memphis to pursue a doctoral degree in audiology beginning in August of 2013.  She has been awarded a graduate assistantship at Memphis.
• Molly Silkowski, a PELP junior and pre-med student, was recently awarded a Presidential Research Scholarship for the 2013-2014 academic year for her proposal entitled "The Synthesis of Kryptofix 222."
• Paige Walker, a PELP senior, received a $5,000 EDH Scholarship this semester from Austin Peay's College of Education.  This scholarship is designed to support students who will teach mathematics and science at the 6-12 grade levels.
• Jesse Brewer, a PELP Senior, is graduating in May as a history major. He will begin teaching history in the fall at Dayspring Academy, a private school in Robertson County, Tennessee.
• Ryan Adams, a PELP junior and physics major, is in Washington, D.C., this semester as an intern with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. He is completing his internship through The Washington Center, one of the premier nonpartisan educational organizations in the United States.
• Clarissa Pulley, a PELP sophomore, was recently selected to serve as the peer mentor in Pres. Hall's PELP-section of APSU 1000 in the Fall 2013 semester.  She will also travel to Spain this summer on an APSU-sponsored trip to that country.
• Brandy Smith will return as a Structured Learning Assistant (SLA) leader next fall in Austin Peay's Academic Support Center.  In addition, she has a job offer as an intern/counselor at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for this summer.
• Amber Lopez, a PELP junior who will graduate this May, has been admitted into a graduate program in psychology at Eastern Tennessee State University.
• Mary Jared, a PELP senior, is completing a Disney Corporation internship in Orlando, Florida.  She will return to campus in May to participate in commencement activities and receive her B.S. in psychology.
• Travis Tanner, a PELP sophomore and physics major, will travel to the Czech Republic for an REU this summer at the University of Pardubice. He will be participating in research in the area of materials science.
• Elizabeth Juelfs, a PELP freshman and physics major, has been accepted into two physics REUs for the coming summer, one at the University of Toledo and the other at the RAMS program in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
• Jordan Taylor, a PELP freshman and physics major, has been accepted into the CSURE REU Summer 2013 Program. CSURE is scheduled to run from June 3 - August 9 at the University of Tennessee.
• Ashleigh Washington, a PELP freshman and chemistry major, has been accepted into the University of Tennessee Health Science Center's track one of the Tennessee Institutes for Pre-Professionals (TIP). This summer program provides clinical internships, professional school test-preparation workshops, and learning skills development workshops to individuals who are historically underrepresented in the health care professions.
• Destynee Horner, a chemistry major and PELP sophomore, has been offered an REU position at the University of Louisville that will focus on cardiovascular research.  She was also offered an REU position in interdisciplinary materials research at Southern Illinois University.  In addition, she has been accepted into the Summer Medical and Dental Education Program (SMDEP) for the coming summer.
• Drew Kerr, a physics major and PELP senior, has been accepted into the University of Chicago's graduate divinity program.
• Mason Yost, another physics major and PELP senior, was accepted into two graduate physics programs, one at Southern Methodist University and the other at Vanderbilt University.  He has decided to attend Vanderbilt, where he will be a McMinn Fellow.
• Thirteen PELP juniors, along with nine non-PELP students, completed a successful service-learning trip to Trinidad and Tobago during spring break.  They partnered with Habitat for Humanity to work on three house builds in the small town of Valencia.