KU News Release

Two KU juniors win national Goldwater scholarships

LAWRENCE — Two University of Kansas juniors, Rachel L. Debes from Hays and Rebecca Lynn Totten from Abita Springs and New Orleans, La., have won Barry M. Goldwater Scholarships, regarded as the premier undergraduate award to encourage excellence in science, engineering and mathematics.

Goldwater scholarships provide up to $7,500 for tuition, fees, books and room and board. Winners who will graduate in 2009 receive one year of support; those graduating in 2010 receive two years of support.

Debes, a mathematics major who is studying in a competitive mathematics program in Hungary this semester, is planning a career researching biostatistical applications in medical fields to improve the lives of others. She is the daughter of Ken and Debbie Debes and a graduate of Hays High School.

Totten is majoring in geology and is preparing to research and teach in paleontology and isotope geochemistry. Since enrolling at KU, she has been selected to participate in scientific expeditions in Spain and China. She is the daughter of Matthew and Iris Totten of Abita Springs, La., and Karen Parsons of New Orleans. She is a graduate of Fountainbleau High School in Mandeville, La.

“I am proud to congratulate Rachel and Rebecca,” said KU Chancellor Robert Hemenway. “They represent not only the best among KU students but also the best among the young science and mathematics scholars in our nation. Their successes in challenging their abilities in both national and international arenas is an example of their academic excellence and dedication to goals.”

A total of 45 KU students, including Debes and Totten, have been selected for Goldwater scholarships since they were first awarded in 1989. Congress established the program in 1986 to pay tribute to the retired U.S. senator from Arizona and to ensure a continuing source of highly qualified scientists, mathematicians and engineers.

Goldwater scholars have impressive academic qualifications that have garnered the attention of prestigious postgraduate fellowship programs. Nationally, recent Goldwater scholars have received 69 Rhodes scholarships, 86 Marshall awards and numerous other distinguished fellowships.

Only sophomores or juniors who plan to graduate in 2009 or 2010 and who were judged to have outstanding academic records, significant research experience and high potential for a research career in mathematics, the natural sciences or engineering were eligible for nomination by their universities. Nominees submitted applications that included an essay related to the nominee’s career and faculty recommendations.

ELLIS COUNTY
From Hays 67601
Rachel L. Debes has been selected for a summer 2008 internship at a NASA facility as a scholar in the Motivating Undergraduates in Science and Technology program. One of her faculty advisers described Debes as a “skilled mathematical thinker” and as having “both an intuitive grasp of and a keen interest in biological questions.” This spring, Debes is in Hungary as part of the Budapest Semesters in Mathematics program, a competitive, intense experience for undergraduate mathematics majors in the United States. Last fall, through her KU faculty mentor, Maria Orive, associate professor in ecology and evolutionary biology, who is on sabbatical at Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University, Debes was invited to make a presentation in the lab of John Wakeley, professor of organismal and evolutionary biology at Harvard. During summer 2007, she attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison Summer Institute for Training in Biostatistics. At KU, she is preparing a research project involving population genetics with a doctoral student in Orive’s lab. Debes was selected for University Scholars, KU’s mentoring program offered to 20 top sophomores annually. She is a National Merit Scholar and a Dane G. Hansen Leaders of Tomorrow Achievement Award winner.

LOUISIANA
From Abita Springs 70420 and New Orleans
Rebecca Lynn Totten plans a career of research and teaching in paleontology and isotope geochemistry. One faculty member describes Totten’s passion for vertebrate paleontology and chemistry as “exactly what we need to produce the new breed of paleoenvironmental geoscientists who are capable of tackling those challenging scientific enigmas that have baffled traditional paleontologists and geochemists.” With two faculty mentors — Larry Martin, senior curator at KU’s Natural History Museum, and Luis Gonzalez, associate professor of geology — she is writing an interdisciplinary senior honors thesis examining the isotopic chemistry of Mosasaurs, large aquatic reptiles that swam in prehistoric seas that covered what is now Kansas and Nebraska. Totten is in her third year working as an assistant in the W.M. Keck Paleoenvironmental and Environmental Stable Isotope Laboratory, where she is a member of the Cretaceous research group. She has worked in Spain as a field assistant in research projects with experienced international petroleum geologists and in China, where she was the only undergraduate selected to participate. She was selected for University Scholars, KU’s mentoring program offered to 20 top sophomores annually. She is secretary of Sigma Gamma Epsilon geology honor society and a member of the Osage chapter of the Association of Women Geoscientists. She has a student pilot’s license and is a member of the Experimental Aircraft Association. Totten attributes her interest in science to seventh-grade project in which she investigated the loss of hearing in her left ear. Her project was one of 40 selected for the Discovery Young Scientist Challenge national science fair in Washington, D.C. The fair included a comparative fossil identification challenge that fascinated Totten long after she returned home.

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