The College of Science awarded more than $700,000 in scholarships and awards to 275 current science students for merit, need and undergraduate research experiences for the 2015-16 academic year. The university awarded $1.43 million to 403 incoming freshmen in the College of Science. In aggregate, 678 science students received more than $2.16 million in scholarship awards.

For Rachel Sousa, being a woman in a notoriously male-dominated field is no obstacle – it just motivates her to work harder. Sousa is a senior mathematics major with a focus on mathematical biology and a minor in computer science at OSU. She also works as an undergraduate research assistant in Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineer Cory Simon’s Lab and interned this summer at the National Cancer Institute at the University of Utah.

But the aspiring mathematician hasn’t always been interested in this career path or even believed it was possible. As a first-generation college student, she didn’t have access to many of the support and resources that her peers did.

“My parents were always very supportive. They just didn’t know what to tell me to do,” explains Sousa. Although their own lack of college experience did not stop Sousa’s parents from trying their best to ensure their children could have the best education possible.

“I have an older brother who’s two years older than me, and whenever we were on car rides, my dad would always quiz us on math,” Sousa said. “My dad said I used to be deterred from answering, because [my brother] was older and would always get things right before me.”

Of course, this all changed when she started second grade and began practicing math with peers her own age. “I remember maybe in second grade we had the timed multiplication tables, and I used to love racing through them. It really piqued my interest,” she explains.

After that, Sousa was hooked. She made the decision to become a math teacher, dual majoring in mathematics and education so that she could help other children overcome their fear of math as well.

“I think having a bad math teacher really deters you from liking math. I had a really good high school math teacher and a really bad one, so I wanted to become one of the good ones. I think math is super nice and beautiful, and I wish everybody could appreciate it,” Sousa said.

Then everything changed when Sousa got to OSU.

Talking with senior mathematics students and faculty in a prerequisite course for math majors, she learned that teaching math was only one of many possibilities that the major could offer.

“There was one student who was working with the baseball team on campus and doing stats on them, and another student who had been doing research over the summer on river water bed systems. I just had never thought about using math for all these other opportunities,” said Sousa.

Soon after, she dropped the education major to focus more deeply on math and added an emphasis in mathematical biology. Mathematical biology uses mathematical principals to model biological phenomena, such as using growth models to describe growth patterns of bacteria in a petri dish or infectious disease models to describe how a disease could spread throughout a community.

“I figured if after I graduate I still want to teach I can still do that. Whereas if I had stayed on the teaching track, I only had one path I could go down,” Sousa explained.

It was at a faculty mixer hosted by the College of Science during Sousa’s freshman year that she first was introduced to Dr. Simon, a chemical engineering faculty researcher in the College of Engineering who had a background in math.

In the Simon Lab, Sousa is working on an individual project using mathematical biology to study an ecological phenomenon known as ‘fairy circles;’ mysterious circular patches of barren land that occur in arid grasslands along the Namib Desert and in parts of Australia. Fairy circles have been a mystery to scientists since the 1970s and continue to fascinate scientists to this day.

“I’m not afraid to put myself out there anymore… I never thought I would get the National Cancer Institute’s summer research internship program, but I did.”

Sousa was awarded an URSA Engage scholarship and a SURE Science Award in 2018, allowing her to spend many hours in the Simon Lab throughout her years at OSU.

Recently Sousa contributed to a group project in the Simon Lab studying metal-organic frameworks, porous molecules that are able to store gasses that have a wide variety of functions. For her part of the project, Sousa used mathematical techniques such as Singular Value Decomposition to break down three-dimensional formulas into two dimensions to analyze the different components. She was also responsible for writing part of a research paper that was published in an academic journal in May 2019, and which earned her a listing as a coauthor, quite a feat for an undergraduate.

In the summer of 2019, Sousa’s research took her all the way to the National Cancer Institute at the University of Utah, where she used mathematical modeling of cancer cell plasticity to understand induced drug resistance and cancer immune cell therapies.

Sousa is grateful for her time at OSU for helping her grow her confidence and expand her horizons.

“I think the biggest thing to overcome was forcing myself out of my comfort zone and really learning about all the opportunities they offer here. I’ve definitely become more open, and I like saying “yes” to whatever opportunities are available,” reflects Sousa.

“I’m not afraid to put myself out there anymore… I never thought I would get the National Cancer Institute’s summer research internship program, but I did.”

Sousa has also participated in OSU’s Faculty-Student Mentoring Program, led by Science Dean Roy Haggerty, which aims to provide upperclassmen and faculty mentors to new and transfer students from underrepresented communities.

She also serves as Vice President of OSU’s Math Club and volunteers in Discovery Days, an annual event where elementary school children come to OSU’s campus to learn about science, engineering, technology and mathematics.

“I really enjoy being able to share my love of math with the kids and see their faces light up when they discover something they hadn’t known before.”

The College of Science warmly congratulates our 2019 SURE Science scholars!

Oregon State University and the College of Science have made it their mission to help students prepare for a bright future by providing potentially life-changing summer research opportunities.

This year, contributions from generous donors have helped more than 50 science students win competitive summer research awards, including the college-wide SURE Science Award (Summer Undergraduate Research Experience) as well as several department-specific awards.

Undergraduate research often plays a key role in developing student-faculty relationships, and gives students hands-on learning experiences that help them grasp the practical applications of science beyond the scope of the classroom.

“For me, a lot of it is about the students who wouldn’t be able to do research if they weren’t getting paid,” program coordinator Gabs James explains.

By providing fellowships to the greatest possible number of students, these awards give many undergraduate students the financial leverage to pursue career goals that would otherwise be unattainable.

The SURE Science Program is available to all full-time science students who meet the academic requirements. The scholarship provides the opportunity to conduct paid research for up to 440 hours over the summer. The scholarship includes a stipend of $5060 and an additional amount of $500 stipend that can be used as funding for activities that support their research. This year, greater donor support has made it possible for 40 students to receive the award — an unprecedented number with the award money totaling more than $220,000!

In addition to SURE Science, there are also several awards which may be received by high achieving students within a department.

New this year in Integrative Biology is the Alexei Lubchenco Menge Fellowship, which was awarded to Kris Bauer to support his research under the guidance of Postdoctoral Scholar Sarah Gravem and Professor Bruce Menge. The fellowship was established in memory of Alexei Lubchenco Menge, who died at age 27 in 2005. Like his biologist parents, Lubchenco Menge was deeply passionate about the ocean and the life it contains. The award seeks to help a student within the department who exemplifies these values.

Also receiving awards this summer are Ryley Tishendorf, who received a Special Integrative Biology Award, and Jiadi He, who received a Special Physics Award. Tishendorf will perform research in biologist Rebecca Terry’s lab, and He will be mentored by biophysicist Weihong Qiu.

In the biochemistry and biophysics department, students applying for the SURE Award are also eligible to apply for the CURE Fellowship. CURE is sponsored by the Ray and Frances Cripps Education Endowment, as well as by faculty mentors who match the awarded funds. This year, eleven biochemistry students received the award, in addition to eight other students from the department who received the SURE Award.

Congratulations to the inspiring next generation of scholars!

SURE Science awardees:

CURE Foundation Awardees:

Ryan Tollefsen is one of four Oregon State University students awarded the 2019 Goldwater Scholarship. Tollefsen, an Honors College double major in physics and mathematics, has an outsized talent for knotty research projects pertaining to thin-film semiconductors and spinning colloidal matter. Calling himself a “physicist to his fingertips,” Tollefsen aspires to be a professor of physics one day, specializing in quantum cosmology and applications of nuclear fusion.

In addition to Tollefsen, Biochemistry and molecular biology students Isabella Karabinas and Kendra Jackson and engineering major Kyzer Gerez also received the prestigious 2019 Goldwater Scholarship, the nation’s top undergraduate award for sophomores and juniors in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Tollefsen, who will be a senior next fall, felt inspired to apply for the Goldwater Scholarship after fellow physics major Mirek Brandt won the Goldwater award in 2017. His extensive preparation certainly helped. Tollefsen started taking graduate-level physics as a sophomore and he is on track to complete the entire graduate-level quantum mechanics and electromagnetic theory sequences by the end of his senior year.

“I find great satisfaction in learning about the universe, and theoretical physics will remain as one my core scientific interests. By the time I reach graduate school, I will be uniquely prepared for high-level field theory,” said Tollefsen.

In the lab of physics professor Oksana Ostroverkhova, he pursues research on developing stable and durable thin-film semiconductors. A skilled programmer, Tollefsen has created a code in Python and Labview to help automate and control complex experiments on semiconductors for his laboratory.

A Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) fellowship, awarded to top-performing undergraduates from across the U.S. and Puerto Rico, took Tollefsen to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in summer 2018. He further strengthened his computational skills by working on a project related to spinning magnetic particles in the Physics of Living Systems lab at MIT— a specialized center which studies biophysics, ecological dynamics and other topics in nonequilibrium systems. The MIT Summer Scholars program, begun in 1983, has a hallowed reputation for bringing the best science and engineering undergraduates in the country to the university for graduate-level materials research.

Tollefsen explains that his goal was to create a molecular dynamics simulation engine in FORTRAN, which would allow his group to corroborate experimental results and model physical systems that are too complex to create in-lab. Currently, Tollefsen is writing a paper capturing the high-impact results he obtained on the project.

“I can now confidently state that there couldn’t have been a better undergraduate program for me than OSU physics."

Via independent study, Tollefsen learned three new coding languages to help him tackle his research project at MIT in a short span of eight weeks and taught himself how to remotely manage computing clusters. “I discovered that a scientist must be a proactive learner; he must be willing to develop new skills whenever the research warrants it,” Tollefsen observed.

Physics majors like Tollefsen enjoy rigorous and collaborative learning experiences in the OSU physics department, long recognized as one of the country’s most pioneering undergraduate physics programs. The department was one of three in the country to win the American Physical Society’s award for Improving Undergraduate Education in 2018.

“The Department of Physics at OSU does an excellent job at preparing its majors with coding, digital electronics and numerical simulations skills,” says Tollefsen.

He graduated from Lake Oswego High School in Oregon. By his own admission, Tollefsen was an indifferent student and didn’t regard himself as particularly gifted in mathematics and science during his earlier school years. He made a split-second decision to switch his major while standing in line for an orientation event at OSU. “I joined the line as an engineering major, and I exited having made up my mind to switch my major to physics.”

Tollefsen credits the highly supportive, nurturing and friendly atmosphere, not to mention the excellent teaching, in the physics department for helping him achieve his academic potential. In high school, he had been surrounded by highly gifted classmates who went on to gain admission at elite, selective universities across the country.

“I can now confidently state that there couldn’t have been a better undergraduate program for me than OSU physics. Interacting with physics professors, friends and doing research in Weniger Hall have been the happiest parts of my educational journey so far,” shared Tollefsen.

The budding physicist has encountered and overcome significant obstacles on his path to academic success. Diagnosed with dyslexia, Tollefsen has encountered lifelong difficulties with reading starting from elementary school. He was able to thrive gradually as he discovered that his strong visual and spatial reasoning skills helped him perform well in mathematics and physics.

Tollefsen’s journey to college was also beset by financial difficulties. Relying on scholarships to support his undergraduate studies, Tollefsen found himself falling short by $1,300 in tuition at the end of his first year. Strong support by physics faculty and the College of Science administration led to OSU covering his fees and allowing him to register for the following academic year.

Straight-A student, Tollefsen’s impressive academic achievements have garnered him a number of awards and scholarships. Other than the Goldwater Scholarship, he has received the David B. Nicodemus Memorial Scholarship in Physics and OSU’s Finley Academic Excellence Scholarship. He has also been awarded the Ruth A. Beyer Honors College Scholarship, the Wayne R. and Julie Claire Spesock Memorial Scholarship and the College of Science’s Harriet R. Anderson Scholarship.

Read more: Physics, mathematics and biochemistry students named Goldwater Scholars

Aspiring neuroscientist grounded in science and the arts wins Goldwater Scholarship

Three science students have been awarded the prestigious Barry Goldwater Scholarship. Third-year students Ryan Tollefsen, Kendra Jackson and Isabella Karabinas received the honor, which is the top undergraduate award in the country for sophomores and juniors in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). Goldwater Scholars are selected on the basis of outstanding academic achievement and for demonstrating the potential to pursue research careers.

From an estimated pool of over 5,000 college sophomores and juniors, 1,223 STEM majors were nominated by 443 academic institutions to compete for the 2019 Goldwater scholarships. A total of 496 students from across the United States were awarded Goldwater scholarships for the 2019-20 academic year.

This year, Oregon State University had four Goldwater Scholarship nominees, and all four juniors were named 2019 Goldwater scholars. This is the first time in OSU history that all its four nominees have received this prestigious national recognition for undergraduate students in the natural sciences, mathematics and engineering. Engineering major Kyzer Gerez has also won the Goldwater scholarship this year.

The Goldwater Scholarship is administered at Oregon State University through LeAnn Adam, OSU Advisor for Prestigious Scholarships and a member of OSU Goldwater Scholarship Committee. The four Goldwater nominees were chosen from a highly competitive pool of 15 candidates, according to Adam. The OSU nomination committee includes faculty from the Colleges of Science and Engineering.

“Thanks to our students and their dedicated faculty mentors, OSU has received the maximum number of Goldwater Scholarships awarded to any single institution in Oregon as well as in the country.”

Jackson, an honors student majoring in biochemistry and molecular biology, is an undergraduate researcher in biochemist Michael Freitag’s lab. Karabinas, an honors double major in biochemistry and molecular biology and psychology, conducts research in biochemist Alvaro Estevez’s lab. Tollefsen, also an Honors double major in physics and mathematics, pursues research on the characterization of novel materials in physicist Oksana Ostroverkhova’s lab.

“I am pleased that three College of Science students have received the Goldwater scholarships this year, which makes our science programs the top producer of Goldwater Scholars. Thanks to our students and their dedicated faculty mentors, OSU has received the maximum number of Goldwater Scholarships awarded to any single institution in Oregon as well as in the country,” said Roy Haggerty, Dean of the College of Science.

“Our record number of Goldwater scholars testifies to the high-caliber of our science undergraduate students and the strength of our research and mentorship programs,” he added.

The College of Science has produced the largest number of Goldwater Scholars at OSU – 16 students have been awarded the Goldwater scholarships to date. Since 2005, 21 Oregon State undergraduates have been named Goldwater scholars, and 12 have received Honorable Mention.

The preeminent undergraduate award in the sciences, the Goldwater Scholarship Program was established in 1986 to honor former Arizona Senator Barry M. Goldwater, and is sponsored by the Barry Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation. The award provides up to $7,500 per year for a maximum of two years covering undergraduate tuition, fees, books, and housing expenses.

Student researchers tackle big questions

First-year science students Eli Nicholas and Jordyn Hamilton are 2018 Presidential Scholars who are finding numerous opportunities to achieve their academic goals and explore new interests at Oregon State University.

The university’s most competitive, merit-based scholarship for in-state undergraduates, the Presidential Scholarship is awarded to the highest-caliber high school seniors in Oregon with a record of academic excellence (3.85 GPA or above plus impressive SAT or ACT scores) among other accomplishments. The generous scholarship awards a total of $40,000 and covers the cost of four years of tuition. In 2018-19, 35 OSU students including seven College of Science students received a Presidential Scholarship. In total, 755 high school seniors were considered for the award.

In addition to Nicholas and Hamilton, zoology major Nathaniel Neal and biology majors Tory Schroeder, Gautam Singh, Elizabeth Reece and Savannah Taggard have also been awarded OSU 2018 Presidential Scholarships.

Seeing the mathematics in music

The university has awarded more than $39.5 million in scholarships to students for the 2017-18 academic year, a key component of OSU President Ed Ray’s Student Success Initiative.

Roughly $24.5 million of the total is spread among 7,271 scholarships to returning students. The rest is for awards to 2,532 new/incoming students, including 34 who received a $10,000-per-year Presidential Scholarship, OSU’s most prestigious undergraduate scholarship.

Approximately 35 percent of this year’s first-year students are receiving scholarship support.

Scholarships for science students at an all-time high

College of Science students received the second highest amount of scholarship funds in the university.

More than $7.5 million in scholarship money is going to College of Science students, the college’s highest total ever, said Roy Haggerty, dean of the college. That is triple the amount awarded two years ago. Reasons for the jump include increases in university scholarships and in the number of high-achieving students enrolling in the College.

Nearly $5 million is allocated to 1,344 scholarships for returning students. The rest is for awards to 570 incoming/new students, including nine who received a Presidential Scholarship.

This year more than half of the college’s first-year students received scholarship support.

“Scholarships enable the college to attract, retain and inspire top science students, most of whom go on to high-achieving careers in industry, graduate school, medical school and other professional programs after graduation,” Haggerty said.

“Oregon State’s financial-need-based scholarships also help academically talented low-income and first-generation students from Oregon and elsewhere stay and excel in college.”

First-generation students typically have a greater financial need so scholarships are a crucial part of their educational equation, said Haggerty, who was first in his family to attend college.

“In our College, the number of first-generation students has risen from 20 percent to 29 percent in the last five years,” he said. “Many scholarship students in the College of Science attest to the value of scholarships in easing the financial burden on their families and enabling them to focus on academics, research, volunteer activities and post-college career goals.”

College of Engineering netted the highest amount in scholarship support. Thirty-five percent of engineering students are receiving scholarship support. They are receiving $12.7 million, with $7.9 million divided among 1,948 scholarships to returning students. Nineteen of the 804 their incoming scholarship students are Presidential Scholars.

In third place is the College of Business. It was awarded more than $3.7 million in scholarships, including roughly $2.3 million spread among 761 scholarships to returning students. The remainder is awarded to 276 incoming students, including one Presidential Scholar. About 29 percent of this year’s first-year business students are receiving scholarship support.

Alumnus Michael Waterman (’64, ’66) has traveled quite a distance to get where he is. From humble beginnings on an isolated livestock ranch in southern Oregon in the 1950s to becoming an internationally celebrated mathematician and biologist at the University of Southern California (USC), Waterman has shattered all expectations.

“For me, OSU was the doorway to the rest of the world,” said Waterman, whose mother was committed to the idea of her children going to college.

Reflecting on his rural childhood, he recalls thinking, “You have no idea what’s out there. It’s very hard to imagine beyond what you see.”

Waterman struggled to see a clear career path forward, but pursued mathematics which proved to be a fortuitous jumping off point in his young life.

The values he acquired growing up in the Pacific Northwest—a respect for living off the land, freedom from outside authority, and a slight tendency to go against the grain and reach beyond the imagination—served him well.

The College of Science is proud to have four doctoral students among the 27 young scientists and engineers selected as 2016 ARCS (Achievement Rewards for College Scientists) Foundation Scholars from the Portland chapter. Students are selected based on their outstanding academic achievement and potential.

Through its partnership with the ARCS Foundation, the College is able to recruit top Ph.D. students in biochemistry and biophysics, chemistry, mathematics, microbiology, statistics and integrative biology. The ARCS award provides doctoral students with $18,000, payable over three years at $6,000 per year.

Kudos to these first-year Ph.D. students, our 2016 ARCS Scholars!

Gisela Abigail Gonzalez-Montiel, (pictured above) a graduate of the University of Portland, is pursuing research in organic chemistry. Gisela completed her undergraduate studies in chemistry and mathematics. She was a 2014 Equity Intern at Oregon Health and Science University, where she conducted research in a biochemistry and molecular biology lab to understand how mutations of the ATP-sensitive potassium ion channel lead to disease. She is currently exploring research interests in microbial natural products chemistry and stereochemistry.

She received the Goodwin/Rothschild Scholar Award from ARCS. The award is given by Sheila A. and J. Michael Goodwin and Sara and Robert Rothschild.

A doctoral student in mathematics, Dallas Foster, holds bachelor’s degrees in mathematics and political science from the University of Utah. His research interests encompass numerical analysis, multi-scale modeling, inverse problems, scientific computing, and their applications to economics, political science and geophysics. He has also received the Provost Distinguished Scholarship at Oregon State University.

Foster received the Emmerson Family Scholar Award from ARCS. The award is a gift from Ann and Ron Emmerson.

Shannon Hennessey is conducting research on predatory snails in intertidal systems and their environmental influences in the integrative biology doctoral program. She received the ARCS Foundation Oregon Scholar Award. She earned her bachelor’s degree in fishery science at the University of Washington. Shannon has also been awarded the prestigious National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (NSFGRF). Read more about Shannon.

William "Bryce" Penta is a Ph.D. student in microbiology and is studying the metabolic pathways of phytoplankton and environmental factors that limit or alter the functioning of these processes. He earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Notre Dame. William worked on a NSF Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) project studying the effects of the varying availability of Vitamin B 12 and other nutrients on the photosynthetic efficiency and growth of phytoplankton.

William received the Silver Endowed Scholar Award from ARCS donors Barbara and Philip Silver.

This year the College raised $50K, to support ARCS Scholars, and is hoping to secure an additional $100K to create an endowment that will support several Ph.D. scholars annually with matching opportunities available for donors.

It's been a busy summer so far for the OREGON STATE ADVANCE Working Group for Equity and Inclusion. For the past two weeks, the team has been participating in a summer seminar to identify initiatives that would educate OSU's campus community about how gender, race/ethnicity, social class, and other aspects of identity combine to disadvantage women in academic Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM).

The summer program is the centerpiece of OREGON STATE ADVANCE. The goal is to educate faculty and administrators on how gender-based inequality in the workplace can be removed by changing behavior. The group engaged in activities to help them recognize and reduce discrimination of women and underrepresented groups in STEM.