Science and Engineering Scholarships and Fellowships Blog

DePauw University Graduate Receives Award

Photo courtesy of DePauw University

Kathleen F. Mittendorf, a recent graduate of  DePauw University, was honored this year with a Graduate Research Fellowship. While at DePauw, she completed a double major in biology and biochemistry. Mittendorf will begin graduate study in the fall at Vanderbilt University’s Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in the Biomedical Sciences.

Mittendorf’s NSF fellowship isn’t the first national recognition she received while at DePauw. As a sophomore in 2008, she was one of three DePauw students to win a Goldwater Award, another highly competitive award given to students in mathematics, the natural sciences and engineering. She says that research experience during the summer of her freshman year — a component of the SRF program — gave momentum to the success she found during her four years at DePauw.

“Getting research experience before our senior year really helps to set us apart from some other schools,” Mittendorf says. “There’s no way I could have won a Goldwater as a sophomore if it wasn’t for that, and the Goldwater application process then made it a lot easier to pursue [the NSF fellowship].”

. . .

Mittendorf’s first foray into research was as a child, when she combed through The New York Times science section for information about treatments for multiple sclerosis, which affects a member of her family.

“Back then, I thought if you were interested in science you either became a doctor or a veterinarian, but I was already doing the most basic kind of research.” Mittendorf says.

. . .

“Fifty years ago, a lot of the techniques we use didn’t even exist,” Mittendorf says. “When my mother was in school, she would have just started to hear about the things we now do in introductory classes. Through the course of your career, you’ll never stop learning.”