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October 7, 2009
By Melissa Conrad
Staff Reporter
Photo courtesy of the University of Illinois Springfield Sophomore Christopher Crockett gets messy in the biology lab. Crockett received |
Sophomore Biology Major Christopher Crockett has been selected from the University of Illinois by the American Society of Microbiology to receive their Undergraduate Teaching Fellowship for 2009.
The American Society for Microbiology is the oldest and largest single biological membership organization and has over 40,000 members worldwide.
Each year the society gives each chosen fellow up to a $2,000 stipend, a two year membership, and travel support the ASM S Conference for Undergraduate Educators. This year four applicants were awarded of the nine who submitted.
The fellowship is awarded to students interested in careers as elementary or secondary school science teachers. It gives students an opportunity to develop projects to provide instruction in a scientific discipline in a school or community atmosphere. The title of Crockett’s project is Microbes: Improving the Environment.
The students are also each set with a mentor at their school and then a teacher or site coordinator from the ASM host site to help guide them and further develop their skills. Michael Lemke from the University of Illinois at Springfield is Crockett’s faculty mentor and Mary Dawson from Taylorville High School is the K-12 site mentor.
When asked about how he got involved with the fellowship Crockett said, “One of the science faculty, Michael Lemke, told me about this opportunity and we came up with some potential ideas for projects that we thought science students in high school would be interested in.
“Then we got in touch with a high school instructor Mary Dawson. The three of us worked out a plan and we filled out the application and sent it off,” Crockett said.
Chris says he is very grateful and honored to receive the award.
“Its a great award to receive, I get to work with students, a smart professor, and an awesome high school teacher to make microbiology seem more interesting to students in high school. This is an awesome opportunity for me, one I didn’t even expect to get. It feels good to get this award. I am still a little surprised that I got it. I am working really hard to do a good job and it means a lot that ASM considered me for this fellowship.”
For more information about the fellowship students can visit www.asm.org/students or contact Michael Lemke at 217/206-7339 or Lemke.Michael@uis.edu.
