April 5, 2005

University Announces 2005–06 Gamow Fellowships

The University recently announced the fourth class of the George Gamow Undergraduate Research Fellows. This year 10 students, representing the Columbian College of Arts and Science and the Elliott School of International Affairs received the coveted grant, bringing the total number of students engaging in the University’s premiere research fellowship program to 44. Since the inaugural group of fellows in 2002–03, awardees have used the grant to study everything from “Pricing Strategies for Networked Goods: A Simulation Approach,” to “Synthesis and Characterization of Nanocrystalline Green Phosphors for Low-Voltage Field Effect Displays.”

The program — primarily open to freshmen, sophomores, and juniors — is co-sponsored .is co-sponsored this fiscal year by the Office of Research and Graduate Studies, the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences, the School of Engineering and Applied Science, the School of Business, and the School of Medicine and Health Sciences.. The Gamow fellowship provides either academic year or summer funding to undergraduate students throughout the University to conduct research under the guidance of a faculty mentor.

The fellowship carries with it stipends for students to help with living expenses, funds for expenses essential to the project, as well as an honorarium for the faculty mentor.

The awards — named for George Gamow, a distinguished theoretical nuclear physicist who served on GW’s faculty from 1934–56 — originally were intended to provide top students who intend to pursue a graduate career with a more rigorous, meaningful academic environment through mentored research experiences while advancing the research programs of GW faculty in the process.

“We hadn’t had anything like this at GW, and didn’t have anything that was University-wide,” said Carol Sigelman, associate vice president for research and graduate studies and professor of psychology.

“It’s like killing two birds with one stone,” added Sigelman. “When you are at a research university, faculty naturally are interested in their research. If you can bring together education and research, that’s terrific from the faculty member’s point of view because involvement of students helps advance their research at the same time that they have a unique teaching opportunity with their students. And the students, of course, have the kind of opportunity one can only get at a research university.”

While this type of interaction is hardly new to GW or other top research universities for that matter, it did mark a concerted investment by the University to expand research opportunities for GW undergraduates.

According to Sigelman the Gamow fellowship forms a centerpiece for a slate of opportunities ranging from the inquiry-based Dean’s Seminars for freshmen in the Columbian College; independent study courses, departmental or Honors Program senior theses, and Luther Rice Collaborative Fellowships.

“Think of the Gamow as the crown jewel of undergraduate research at GW,” Sigelman said. “It’s the most prestigious way to get involved in research. It is competitive and it’s aimed at students who are highly accomplished and who have shown a real interest in a subject matter and demonstrated confidence as a student. For them it can be a stepping stone to external fellowships and more.

“The kinds of students who do well applying to graduate schools are those who have some research experience, that’s what makes them interesting. It gives them a real edge on a student who just took courses and never really got true in-depth experience in research.”

2005-06 Gamow Fellowship Awards

Taylor Asen (CCAS, English), Mentor: Maria Frawley, associate professor of English, “Robert Louis Stevenson and the Children’s Literary Market in Victorian England”

Liza Blake (CCAS, English), Mentor: Maria Frawley, associate professor of English, “The Pauses of Sleep: Sleep as a Narrative Strategy in Victorian Literature”

Jill Michelle Furst (CCAS, geology), Mentor: George Stephens, deputy director of the University Honors Program and professor of geography and geosciences, “Medical Geology in the Navajo Nation: A Project to Assess the Health Effects of Burning Coal (in an underserved population)”

Malak Hamwi (ESIA, international affairs) Mentor: Janet Steele, asociate professor of media and public affairs, “No Laughing Matter: The Syrian Tabloid Ad-Domari (“The Lamplighter”) as a Form of Everyday Resistance”

Joseph Krepp (CCAS, biology), Mentor: John Hawdon, associate professor of microbiology and tropical medicine, “Hookworm Infection: Role of Heat Shock Factor in the Transistion of Parasitism”

Jonathan Mendelson (CCAS, biology), Mentor: L. Courtney Smith, associate professor of biological sciences, “Do Immune Cells in the Purple Sea Urchin Proliferate in response to Immune Challenge?”

John Patrick Miller (ESIA, internatinal affairs), Mentor: Dane Kennedy, Elmer Louis Kayser Professor of History and International Affairs, “British Combat Tactics within the Mesopotamian Front: Engagement to Surrender at Kut-Al Amara(1914–16)”

Elizabeth Perlmutter (CCAS, music), Mentor: Leslie Jacobson, chair, Department of Theatre and Dance, “The South Africa Project”

Emily Robertson (CCAS, music), Mentor: Laura Youens, professor of music, “Johannes Starton’s Missa Jouyassance Vous Donneray from the National Library of Medicine’s “Bathtub Collection:” A Modern Edition and Study”

Allison Seitchik (CCAS, psychology), Mentor: Tonya Dodge, assistant professor of psychology, “Developing a Questionnaire to Predict the Use of Performance Enhancing Substances”

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