Mary Beth Day '07 and Meghan Dunn '06 have been named Barry M. Goldwater Scholars for the 2005-06 academic year. The scholarship is the premier national undergraduate award in the fields of mathematics, the natural sciences and engineering. 

The Goldwater Scholars were selected on the basis of academic merit from a field of 1,091 mathematics, science and engineering students who were nominated by the faculties of colleges and universities nationwide. This year 320 scholarships were awarded.

The Scholarship Program honoring Senator Barry M. Goldwater was designed to foster and encourage outstanding students to pursue careers in the fields of mathematics, the natural sciences or engineering.

Mary Beth Day, a sophomore from Seneca Falls, N.Y., is a geoarchaeology major at Hamilton. A paper she co-authored with Hamilton Professors Karl Kirschner and George Shields was recently published in the International Journal of Quantum Chemistry. Titled "Pople's Gaussian-3 model chemistry applied to an investigation of (H2O)8 water clusters," Day worked on this project during the summers of 2003 and 2004, and during her freshman year in 2003-04.  A William M. Bristol Scholar, Day received a Ferguson-Seely Fund Grant for summer research in 2004 and a National Science Foundation-STEP/Dreyfus Summer Research Grant in 2003. She has been named to the Dean's List every semester since fall 2003.

Day is a flutist with the Hamilton College Orchestra and Chamber Music group and is involved in the Food Salvage Program, Campus Radio Show and Samuel Kirkland Film Society. She hopes to pursue a Ph.D. in climate study, then a research career in paloeoclimatology in an academic or government agency setting.

Meghan Dunn, a junior from Clinton, N.Y., is a chemistry major. For the past three summers and during the 2004-05 academic year she has done computational chemistry research under the direction of professor George Shields. Dunn was co-author of two research papers on thermodynamics and clusters with Shields and another student, Emma Pokon. They were published in the International Journal of Quantum Chemistry and the Journal of the American Chemical Society in 2004. Dunn also presented her research in a poster session at the Sanibel Symposium on Quantum Chemistry in March, 2004, and again in 2005.

Dunn is active with the Hamilton Environmental Action Group. Before transferring to Hamilton she attended George Washington University where she was on the cross country/track team, and was public events coordinator for GW Students for Fair Trade. She plans to pursue a Ph.D. in environmental chemistry and investigate current problems threatening the environment.