KU News Release

LAWRENCE — A spring 2010 University of Kansas graduate with degrees in dance and human biology has received three awards to help finance her first year of medical school at KU next fall.

Alessandra “Ali” Jenri Ainsworth of Chesterfield, Mo., has won two fellowships through Phi Kappa Phi, a national honor society, and a national scholarship through her sorority, Chi Omega.

As a member of Phi Kappa Phi, Ainsworth won the $1,500 James Blackiston Memorial Graduate Fellowship offered through the KU chapter. She then became eligible to compete for and won the $5,000 national Phi Kappa Phi Graduate Fellowship.

She also received a $1,700 Mary Love Collin’s National Chi Omega scholarship.

Ainsworth’s undergraduate achievements include serving as teaching assistant in molecular and cellular biology and mammalian physiology. In 2009, she won an Undergraduate Research Award for a project titled “Neurobiology and Ballet.” Her research was published in the KU Journal of Undergraduate Research.

She also won the 2009 Phillips-Stone Dance Award for outstanding achievement in dance. Ainsworth has been a dance scholarship student and a member of the University Dance Company since her freshman year. She has performed in guest artist works by Karole Armitage and Carl Corey, as well as dances choreographed by KU dance faculty.

“My interests in dance are based on both the enjoyment and discipline of movement and the biological and physiological components, which drive this movement,” said Ainsworth.

Beyond academics, Ainsworth’s service to KU and in the community has included serving as the financial director for KU’s Center for Community Outreach; appearing in the Rock Chalk Revue, an annual charitable benefit; and serving on revue’s advisory board. She has volunteered at the Jubilee Café, preparing and serving breakfast to the homeless; Lawrence Memorial Hospital; the Heart of America Hospice; and Cardinal Glennon Children’s Hospital in Kansas City, Mo.

She is the daughter of Linda Hennemann and Charles Ainsworth of Chesterfield, Mo, and is a graduate of Visitation Academy in St. Louis.

The Blackiston fellowship is named in honor of James Blackiston, a former graduate student in linguistics and instructor in the Intensive English Center who was active in the formation of KU’s Phi Kappa Phi chapter in 1975. Blackiston died during the summer of 1975.

David Darwin, the Deane E. Ackers Distinguished Professor of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering, is the faculty adviser for the campus Phi Kappa Phi chapter.

Phi Kappa Phi has about 300 chapters nationally, and each may select one candidate to compete for awards. Phi Kappa Phi was established in 1897 to recognize academic excellence in all disciplines. Only the top 10 percent of seniors, the top 7.5 percent of last-term juniors and the top 10 percent of graduate students are invited to join.

Phi Kappa Phi’s primary objectives are to promote the pursuit of excellence in all fields of higher education and to recognize outstanding achievement by students, faculty and others by election to membership and through various awards for distinguished achievement.