Katie
Peek '02 has won a prestigious Goldwater Scholarship.
When she was in tenth grade,
Katie Peek '02 announced to her parents that she planned to become an
English teacher, and the two former math majors gritted their teeth.
"They were right," says Peek now. "It was a passing phase. I wanted
to be an astronomer when I was in grade school, and my love for
physics, which I took in eleventh grade, rekindled that goal." Peek
and her parents are all smiles now, after jointly getting the news
that the MHC physics and astronomy major has been named a Goldwater
Scholar from the state of New York. The Goldwater Foundation is a
federally endowed agency established in 1986. 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, and engineering. The Goldwater
Scholarship is the premier undergraduate award of its type in these
fields. "The Goldwater Foundation
mailed my envelope home, so on a Saturday afternoon my father called
and said that I had received a letter. He opened it and read the
letter aloud to me. I was jumping around my room, still on the phone.
It was really great to be able to share that moment with my family,"
says Peek. Peek's adviser, Tom Dennis, professor of astronomy, is
also thrilled. "I can't imagine a more suitable Goldwater award;
Katie is passionately interested in the sky and the universe, loves
to share her enthusiasm and knowledge, and is also a truly excellent
student," Dennis said. The Goldwater Foundation
awarded 309 of the prestigious scholarships for the 2000 - 2001
academic year to undergraduate sophomores and juniors from the fifty
states and Puerto Rico. The Goldwater scholars were selected on the
basis of academic merit from a field of 1,176 mathematics, science,
and engineering students who were nominated by the faculties of
colleges and universities nationwide. The one- and two-year
scholarships cover the cost of tuition, fees, books, and room and
board up to a maximum of $7,500 per year. Peek won a two-year
scholarship. Since the Goldwater Scholarships were first awarded in
1989, fourteen Mount Holyoke students have been named scholars. Peek's current interests in
astronomy center around planetary science, stellar evolution, and
solar physics. During her first year at MHC, she participated in a
first-year honors tutorial in cosmology with Dennis, and last
semester she completed independent work in the area of photometry
(the science of measuring the brightness of celestial objects),
learning to use the College's twenty-four-inch telescope. This
semester she is doing a spectroscopy independent study with Darby
Dyar, visiting assistant professor of geology, who notes, "Katie's
enthusiasm for planetary science has been a source of inspiration
both to me and to the students in my classes. She always manages to
ask the questions that I myself am wondering about, and her interest
pushes me to explore things that I might otherwise have passed by."
Of her fascination with the universe, Peek says "Astronomy for me is
unique in that it allows us to bring together the laws of physics and
mathematics with the beauty of nature and a tradition that dates back
to the ancient world. It's wonderful to feel connected to so much." Not one to be idle over the
summer, Peek has already lined up an internship for this summer with
Philip Nicholson, a specialist in planetary orbits and rings. He is
planning the Cassini mission, a space mission that will land a probe
on Titan, one of Saturn's moons, and make detailed observations of
Saturn and its rings. Peek will be running simulations of the flight
path (which is already determined) and thinking about what would be
interesting to study. Nicholson is part of the committee that will
make the final decisions about what the spacecraft, which is
currently near Jupiter and will reach Saturn in 2004, will examine.
Peek is planning to spend next summer at the Columbia University
Biosphere program. Her long-range plans include earning a Ph.D. and
gaining employment at a research university, where she can "combine
[her] love of teaching with [her] love of scientific
discovery." The English department's loss will be the astronomy
department's gain.
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