Ithaca College Quarterly
Ithaca College prides itself on offering challenging research opportunities to its students early in their academic careers. That approach to undergraduate research was recently recognized on a national scale when biology major Michael Axtell ’98 (pictured, right) and biochemistry major Michael Mazourek ’99 (left) were awarded 1997 Goldwater scholarships. This is the first time in the College’s history that two students received this honor in the same year.
"After we applied, I thought if Mike would win, I wouldn’t," Mazourek says. "It’s really rare to have two winners from the same school, especially a school this size. There are universities a lot bigger than Ithaca College that don’t have more than one winner. This is really something very special."
Congress established the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Program in 1986 to encourage young scholars to pursue research careers in mathematics, natural science, and engineering. Competition for the awards is intense. This year, from a national field of 1,164 applicants, only 282 scholarships were given.
Axtell’s interest is environmental toxicology. The recipient of a Dana internship from Ithaca College and a cooperative grant from the National Science Foundation, he spent the summer between his sophomore and junior years in the Czech Republic studying the effects of acid rain damage to grasses. His research adviser was biology professor John Bernard.
Mazourek is studying how enzymes in a certain protein affect the ways cells convert food to energy. He hopes to discover a direct relationship between the enzymes and the role they play in energy production. Understanding more about this process, he said, could better our understanding of a number of disorders, including Alzheimer’s disease.
"I got interested in biology in high school," Mazourek says. "When I was visiting the College, I was told I could start doing research as a freshman. That was just an afterthought everywhere else I was looking."
"One can make the argument that involving our students early makes them competitive at a national level," says Vicki Cameron, an associate biology professor and Mazourek’s research adviser. "And by competitive, I mean having the ability to demonstrate that they are going to continue to excel in scientific research. That’s the criterion the judges who awarded these scholarships were looking for."
Axtell plans to attend graduate school and continue his work in environmental toxicology. Mazourek is also planning on graduate school, where he will concentrate on molecular genetics.
"The credit for these awards shouldn’t go to just us," Axtell says. "We really have to recognize the faculty here and the inclusive way they approach undergraduate research. If that kind of support hadn’t been there, we’d never have been in the running."
The previous Goldwater scholars at Ithaca College were Joseph Bliss ’90, Thomas Boyd ’94, and Peter Yakowec ’96.
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