Students Receive Kapp Prize, Carter Center Internship
Alma College students continue to receive recognition for outstanding achievement.
Carrie Commissaris was announced as the third Ronald O. Kapp Honors Day Prize winner for the natural sciences division. Tonya Currey was selected for an internship in the Carter Center’s conflict resolution program.
The Kapp Prize is named for the late Ronald O. Kapp, who was an Alma College biology professor for 32 years and vice president of academic affairs for 20 years.
The prize is open to all students and groups, and each division is judged for the quality of both the research and the presentation by a panel. Elisabeth Bletsch and Jessica Paige also are Kapp Prize recipients.
Plymouth graduate Commissaris presented “Histological Analysis of Thermally Regulated Melanization of Young Chrysemys picta and Trachemys scripta Turtles.”
In her study, she and Rebecca Mortensen, who also graduated in 2011, tested whether skin color varies as a function of temperature, substrate color and their interaction in two species of freshwater turtles.
“Winning the Kapp Prize was a great way to complete my Alma experience,” she says. “I started this project in September 2009, so it feels good to have my research recognized after having worked on it for such a long time.”
Biology Professor John Rowe and Lawrence Wittle, professor emeritus of biology, were her faculty sponsors.
“Both of them were great to work with,” says Commissaris. “They were always available when I had questions or needed something. The biology department’s faculty as a whole has been very supportive of student research.”
Carter Center Intern To Work as Research Assistant
Missouri graduate Tonya Currey will focus her research efforts on Tunisia and Libya through her internship as a research assistant in the Carter Center’s conflict resolution program.
Through its partnership with Emory University, the Carter Center seeks to prevent and resolve human rights conflicts, enhance freedom and democracy and improve health.
Out of more than 1,200 applicants, only 38 graduate and undergraduate students were accepted to intern at the center this summer.
“Realizing the program’s prestige and the opportunities it could potentially provide, it was clear that I had to apply,” says Currey. “It’s an honor to be selected, and I look forward to the experience it will offer me, both academically and personally.”
Posted: Thu, May 5th, 2011 at 7:57AM
