A LITTLE SCHOLARLY ADVICE

It was brought to my attention a few months ago that an Ohio State University student was a 2008 winner of the Rhodes Scholarship. She also was the first female OSU student to win this prestigious award. Jessica Hanzlik is a senior majoring in French and physics and an advocate of gender equality in the sciences. She has founded two student organizations, Women in Physics and Women in Math and Science, to encourage young women to explore science-related careers.

This sounded like someone who could be quite an inspiration to our students, so I looked her up and invited her to visit the school. She was very gracious and interested in seeing Metro and meeting some students.

Before Jessica came, we gave our students a briefing on what a Rhodes Scholar is so that they could appreciate her accomplishment. Rhodes Scholarships are presented to only 32 U.S. students each year, and Jessica is only the fifth Ohio State student to ever win it. The scholarship award includes funding for two years of graduate study at the University of Oxford in England, where Jessica plans to pursue a doctorate degree in physics.

We arranged for her to present in two of Mr. Trang’s Physics classes. She shared her research in high-energy physics and the search for the top quark and the Higgs boson. Never having had a Physics class myself, I tried to follow along and it sounded pretty exciting—lots of protons and antiprotons crashing and particles splitting. (Maybe I should pay more attention to what Sheldon and Leonard say on The Big Bang Theory!)

But seriously, meeting someone like Jessica really helps to shatter (smash, splinter, annihilate, obliterate) the stereotype of “science nerd” in a massive (vast, enormous, colossal, immense) way!

Last week Mr. Trang took his students to OSU’s Denman Undergraduate Research Forum to interview presenters, one of whom was our new friend Jessica Hanzlik. We really enjoyed getting to know her and wish her great success at Oxford!