(Left to right) Goldwater winners Callan Ordoyne '03 (with friend), Margaret K. Trias '03, and Elizabeth H. Burrows '02.

Thanks to their stellar achievements in mathematics and science, three MHC students—with interests ranging from spiders to wetlands—have struck gold, Goldwater that is. Elizabeth H. Burrows '02, a double major in mathematics and environmental studies; Callan Ordoyne '03, a biological sciences major; and Margaret K. Trias '03, a physics major, have won prestigious Goldwater Scholarships, which are designed to encourage outstanding students to pursue careers in mathematics, the natural sciences, and engineering. The scholarship program, which honors Senator Barry M. Goldwater, is the premier undergraduate award of its type in these fields.

The Goldwater Foundation awarded 302 of these scholarships for the 2001–2002 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 1,164 mathematics, science, and engineering students 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. Ordoyne and Trias won two-year scholarships, and Burrows received a one-year scholarship. Since the Goldwater Scholarships were first awarded in 1989, seventeen Mount Holyoke students have been named scholars.

Callan Ordoyne '03

After a youth spent walking nature trails, exploring state and national parks, and watching public television shows on wildlife, it should come as no surprise that Callan Ordoyne grew up to revere the natural world and with the goal of pursuing ecological research and a doctorate in ecology.

Homeschooled by her mother, a former Montessori teacher, from third through tenth grade, Ordoyne, along with her three siblings, was able to explore her interests in depth. "There were times when we would just take off for a week and camp out in places like the north woods of Minnesota or the Black Hills of South Dakota to study those environments," she says, "or spend the day studying plants at a state park. It was great."

At the age of sixteen, Ordoyne began taking courses at the University of Minnesota. When it came time to choose a college, she wanted to try something different from the "big university thing," and a small liberal arts college with an excellent reputation in the sciences fit the bill. Upon arriving at MHC, Ordoyne became part of a class that was about as far from a large survey course as one can get. She and Clarisse Hart '03 were the only students in a first-year tutorial on latitudinal gradients in species diversity of wetland plants and animals taught by Aaron Ellison, Fisher Associate Professor of Environmental Studies.
Ellison says, "Calley is one of the best students I have had the privilege to work with in my eleven years at Mount Holyoke. This year, Calley and Clarisse have extended the work begun in our tutorial in their independent research on the diversity of spiders in bogs. In order to do this work, they have learned the intricacies of spider identification and taxonomy, which is a rare skill. They are now two of three experts on spider identification in the region, the third being Robert Edwards, the retired director of the National Marine Fisheries Service. Very little is known about spiders who live in bogs, and the research that Calley and Clarisse are conducting will add to the growing catalog of biodiversity information on these threatened wetlands."
This summer Hart and Ordoyne will expand their work on spiders by conducting an experimental study of a possible competitive interaction between web-building spiders and carnivorous pitcher plants in a bog near the College. This project, supported by the National Science Foundation, will be one of the few studies ever undertaken of competition for resources between a plant and an animal.

Elizabeth H. Burrows '02

Like Ordoyne, Elizabeth H. Burrows '02 spent a good deal of her childhood walking in the woods and enjoying nature, and she now leads MHC's Outing Club when she's not solving mathematics problems or conducting research in wetlands. Scientific and mathematical ability seems to run in her family—her father has a Ph.D. in biophysics and physiology and works for NASA—and Burrows intends to follow suit by earning a Ph.D. that combines mathematics and environmental studies.
Since the summer after her sophomore year, Burrows has been getting her feet wet in environmental research by working with Jill Bubier, Clare Boothe Luce Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies, at a wetland site in southern New Hampshire. By comparing different methods for measuring carbon dioxide exchange between the wetland ecosystem and the atmosphere, the research will contribute significantly to a long-term study of environmental controls on greenhouse gas emissions from wetlands in collaboration with scientists at University of New Hampshire. Says Bubier, "Liz is a highly motivated student with endless enthusiasm for field science and research."

Burrows will return to the New Hampshire research site this summer as one of seven rising seniors engaged in a directed research project with a faculty member in the laboratory sciences. These students will each be paired with a rising sophomore as part of the College's Sherman Fairchild Student Summer Research Cascade Mentoring Program. The younger students will begin research under the joint guidance of the faculty members and the rising seniors.

Margaret K. Trias ‘03

Margaret Trias's father and older brother both considered careers in physics and ended up becoming lawyers. Trias seems determined not to let any of the known forces in the universe propel her in that direction—she is firmly resolved to pursue a Ph.D. in physics. Her early influences include science-related dinnertime conversation with her father, who died when she was thirteen, and the cosmologically based bedtime stories he used to tell her. More recently, she has been inspired by working with lasers under the guidance of Janice Hudgings, Clare Boothe Luce Assistant Professor of Physics. Says Hudgings, "As Maggie's academic adviser, I've known since her arrival at MHC of her determination to pursue a Ph.D. in physics. Her enthusiasm for the field is delightful, often spilling over into her daily interactions. For example, as part of her optics class last semester, Maggie was required to complete a research project of her own initiation. She was so excited by the results of her study of temperature-induced instabilities in a HeNe laser that she showed her experiment to the other majors and initiated a detailed conversation with me about her results. This sort of enthusiasm for physics lab is rare indeed!"

Trias plunged right into laser-related research the summer after her first year, participating in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) summer program at MHC. For the last year, she has been working on an independent research project in Hudgings's lab, examining the beam profile of a new type of semiconductor laser. Impressed with the caliber of Trias's research, Hudgings says, "I fully expect that Maggie's work, when completed, will be published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. Maggie impressed me from the start with her determination and independence, taking it upon herself to learn the physics necessary to understand her project and teaching herself Labview in order to improve the data-acquisition part of her experiment."

Outside the lab, Trias, who also enjoys mathematics, is an active member of the physics department, attending Society of Physics Students meetings, initiating various activities, and regularly attending physics seminars at Mount Holyoke and the other local colleges. She has also been a member of the College's varsity cross-country team.