April 8, 2020

Adrianna Crossing
Doctoral student in Counseling and Educational Psychology

"We would like to give a shout out to our fabulous Graduate Assistant, Adrianna Crossing. Adrianna serves as a research assistant for the evaluation of Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation of Metro Lansing. Adrianna’s presence on our team elevates the quality of our work and our spirits in equal measure. Not only does Adrianna bring to our collective work a passion for racial justice, a deep knowledge of the relevant scholarship, and, through her role as a student facilitator of the MSU Dialogues, an understanding of the everyday practices that promote racial justice, she also brings to every one of our team’s interactions warmth, vulnerability and humor. We are delighted to have the opportunity to work with her and will miss her greatly when she graduates."

We are grateful for you, Adrianna!

Adrianna is being recognized by Miles McNall

Greg Rogel
Doctoral student in Philosophy

"Greg - thank you for always being a kind and understanding ear to share concerns and troubles with. I appreciate your honesty, your professionalism, and your sense of humor. We are lucky to have you with us in the College of Arts & Letters - I hope you realize how important your perspective is. Thank you.

We are grateful for you, Greg

Greg is being recognized by Amy Lampe

Hannah Ahluwalia
Master’s student in Accounting 

"Hannah created an Empowerment Closet as an undergraduate student and has continued to run the Closet as a graduate student. The Empowerment Closet loans business professional clothing to male and female MSU students to support their career success. Hannah raised the funds from corporate partners and individuals with the support of Women in Business Students' Association, purchased the clothes and works with students to make sure we have what they need. Hannah was also one of four MSU students who planned the Big Ten Women in Business Connections Leadership Conference in Detroit. The conference hosted nine Big Ten Universities and 57 students. The conference showcased Detroit as a great place to start your professional career."

Hannah, we are grateful for you!

Hannah is being recognized by Ann Crain

Jessie Magalski 
Master’s student in Communicative Sciences & Disorders (CSD)

"Thank you for your guidance throughout the graduate school application process. I appreciate how you shared your application journey with us in NSSLHA and were there to answer my questions a year later when it was my turn to apply. You are a wonderful role model and will make a great SLP!"

Jessie, we are grateful for you!

Jessie is being recognized by Emily Lance

Patrick Stillson
Master’s student in Entomology

"Patrick is part of the LGBTQ+ community at MSU. He and his husband got married soon after he started his MS program in my lab. He brought a different perspective and much needed diversity to our department which I really enjoyed. I first got to know Patrick as an undergraduate student working in my lab on a summer research project. Lucky for me, he decided to stay on for an MS. He did a wonderful job and is now ready to graduate with two peer-reviewed publications, one submitted and another close to being ready for submission. After I felt like he learnt everything I could teach him during the MS, I recommended he look for a PHD project in a lab that could provide him with professional challenges. As a result, he recently accepted a PhD position in a molecular lab in Texas, where he and his husband will be moving soon."

Patrick, we are grateful for you!

Patrick is being recognized by Zsofia Szendrei

Brean Prefontaine
Doctoral student in Physics and Astronomy

Brean Prefontaine is an outreach coordinator for the Women and Minorities in the Physical Sciences (WaMPS) graduate student group, and she has gone above and beyond with public science outreach. Brean took the initiative to greatly expand WaMPS's outreach program from participating in 2-3 outreach events per semester to now more than a dozen outreach events each semester. These new events include MSU Science Fest, after-school programs at libraries, and classroom visits. She also volunteered as SL@MS co-chair last summer, organizing and running the WaMPS summer camp for middle school students. She spent a lot of time developing new fun and educational activities for all these new outreach events, with modifications for many age groups that range all the way from preschool to high school, and she acquired all of the supplies and materials that are needed for them. This is an incredible amount of work for a single person to tackle! Because of Brean, a lot more graduate students have been able to get involved in outreach, and she is very patient with teaching them how to engage the kids. Thanks to Brean, WaMPS's outreach program has been a huge success and has grown immensely over the past 2 years! She definitely deserves to be thanked and the WaMPS Board wants to recognize for her amazing outreach work in the physics department!

Brean, we are grateful for you!

Brean is being recognized by Jessie Micallef

Colton Wasitler 
Doctoral student in Music Performance 

"Colton has worked for The Writing Center @ MSU for many years with increasing levels of responsibility and commitment over time. He is the coordinator of our home base in Bessey Hall as well as our online satellite. Because of his work training consultants to conduct online sessions, we were well prepared to move our whole center online in this time of crisis. In addition, he worked tirelessly those first few days to get us going online and to make sure every consultant had the guidelines and resources they would need to function in this new environment. I truly appreciate his leadership, his mentorship of other consultants, and his good will and humor during all of it."

Colton, we are grateful for you!

Colton is being recognized by Trixie Smith

Di Zhang
Doctoral Student in Pharmacology and Toxicology

"After an exemplary graduate career at MSU, Di Zhang defended her dissertation in the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology on March 27, 2020. Di was interested in every project in the lab, and she has been incredibly productive. She has already published five first author publications and has written two more. Tellingly, Di wrote three papers on three different projects in one year and has already followed up with a second manuscript on two of these projects. Di did not spend all of her time in the lab as she was a Venture Fellow at Spartan Innovations, completed a summer internship at Charles River Laboratories, helped with undergraduate and online courses, and was a leader in the Graduate Student Organization. Di won multiple awards and fellowships throughout her career, including an IPSTP T32 training fellowship, travel awards from ASPET and FASEB, an Aitch Fellowship, Penner Award, Best Paper and Best Speed Data Presentation awards from the Department of Pharmacology, and the F99 NCI Pre-doc to Post-doc Transition Award on the first submission for her proposal entitled “Targeting the Nrf2 pathway in cancer.” This award changed her career plans, and to her credit, Di will use this prestigious award for a postdoctoral fellowship at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute. I am looking forward to hearing about the important contributions she will make in this new position. Di is a talented and dedicated scientist with an admirable work ethic and has been an excellent citizen in the department and university. She truly is a role model for other graduate students, and I am grateful that I was able to serve as her mentor."

Di, we are grateful for you!

Di is being recognized by Karen Liby

FAST Fellows 2019-20
Kimberly Alberts, Gaurav Chauda, Meg Cross, Gelicia Forde, Goodman-Williams Rachael, Ryley Mancine, Connie Rojas, Ted Van Alst, Scott Warner
Various Disciplines

What a joy to work with each and everyone of you! We love seeing the progress you have made in your Teaching Scholarship, your growth as researchers, and the wonderful and supportive community you have built! We are so proud of all your successes, and we cannot wait to see who you are all becoming and what paths you are taking. We look forward to seeing you present your final projects. Hopefully we will all have to chance to connect in person soon again. 

Fast Fellows 2019-20, we are grateful for you!
Rique Campa, Kellie Walters and Stefanie Baier

Madison Chandler
Doctoral student in Kinesiology

"I would like to thank Madison for the help and guidance that she provided to me when I was completing my personal statement for graduate school. I reached out to her for help and she was more than happy to help me. She provided me with critiques, advise and adjustments in my statement. She even sent me her own personal statement for me to reference! I’m very grateful for Madison because with her help, I received offers from five graduate programs. I will never forget the kindness that she showed me, and I will never leave her contributions out of my story."

Madison, we are grateful for you!

Madison is being recognized by Kadeeja Murrell

Teresa Williams
Master’s student in Writing Rhetoric and American Culture

"Teresa is preparing to graduate this semester. They applied to 5 Ph.D. programs this year and got into all 4 with great offers...but they elected to stay at MSU. We are so glad they are staying! We congratulate them on being a Rasmussen Fellow as well. Thanks for choosing MSU!"

Teresa, we are grateful for you! 

Teresa is being recognized by Bill Hart-Davidson