Two University of Minnesota sophomores win Hollings Scholarships from NOAA

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has selected two University of Minnesota students to receive Ernest F. Hollings Scholarships.  The Hollings Scholarships awards 110 students up to $9,500 a year for their junior and senior years and a paid internship at a NOAA facility during the summer in between.

This year’s University of Minnesota winners are Claudia Althoen, an Environmental Sciences and Policy and Management major in the College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences, and Augustus Pendleton, a microbiology major in the College of Biological Sciences.  Althoen, who is from Bemidji, Minnesota, has minors in Climatology, Earth Science, and Creative Writing and leads the organics recycling project for the Minnesota Student Association’s sustainability committee.  She is working in the lab of Professor Dylan Millet of the Department of Soil, Water, and Climate to assess models of biosphere-atmosphere processes, especially fluxes of Volatile Organic Compounds, and is planning graduate study in atmospheric science.  Pendleton, from Shorewood, Wisconsin, is minoring in Marine Biology and spent last summer as a research intern at the Darling Marine Center in Walpole, Maine.  This summer he is back at DMC continuing his research on Antarctic Coral Reproduction with Dr. Rhian Waller.  At the University of Minnesota he is investigating the metabolism of the bacterium Shewanella oneidensis with Professor Jeffrey Gralnick of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, and he plans to earn a Ph.D. in marine microbiology.

The Hollings scholarship is intended to increase public awareness of oceanic and atmospheric science, recruit and prepare students for public service careers in science and natural resources, and to recruit and prepare students for careers as science educators. 

University of Minnesota junior Melissa Drown, a major in Ecology, Evolution and Behavior, was selected as a Hollings Scholar last year.  University of Minnesota--Twin Cities sophomores who are interested in applying for the scholarship in the future should contact Timothy Jones in the Office of National and International Scholarships at [email protected] or 612-624-5522.