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.
