University of Mary Washington - Index

University of Mary Washington - summer08 - Index

collectively this year. And he was president of the UMW
chapter his senior year.
While SHH gave him experience, he also spent countless
hours organizing such campus fundraisers as SHH Walkathon
2008. The April event included nearly 1,000 walkers and
raised more than $73,000.
Davidson couldn’t imagine how Simeone could do all
he committed to and get a Fulbright. “I kept telling him,
‘Justin you really have got to back off from some of this
service stuff or you run the risk of damaging your academic
career,’” Davidson said. “It is astonishing that he has been
able to pull this off!”
Caitlin Gembol wants to help people,
too, by learning about global warming.
For her senior independent research, she
designed a study of spiders to predict
how a warmer, dryer environment might
affect human health.
Gembol used spiders because their voracious appetites
help keep insect populations in check – including those of
disease-carrying bugs. If the spiders’ populations fall due to
changes in heat and humidity, insect populations might
grow, and so might the human diseases they carry.
Under the guidance of entomologist Joella Killian,
professor of biology, Gembol spent spring 2007 planning her
study. That summer, she would gather gravid – egg-carrying
– wolf spiders. But she hadn’t figured on the drought that hit
Fredericksburg, leaving few of any types of wolf spiders.
The spiders were dead, but her research wasn’t. She
knew Ecuador was known for its biodiversity – including
lots of spiders. With the right grant and connections, she
might be able to move her project to that Central American
country after graduation. Of the many emails she sent to
researchers, one to American biologist Cliff Keil at the
Catholic University in Quito came back with an invitation
to come there to study.
Warming on the Cotopaxi volcano, in the Andes near
Quito, had begun to melt glaciers, Keil said. Research like
Gembol’s had been done in that rare ecosystem only on
mammals, never on spiders.
Gembol applied for a Fulbright Scholarship for her study
“The Effects of Global Climate Change on the Behavior of
Arachnids.” The grant she received will cover the research
from August 2008 through June 2009, accommodations,
medical insurance, and educational materials.
The transfer student packed a lot into her two years at
40
UNIVERSITY OF MARY WASHINGTON MAGAZINE����������������
UMW, a place she discovered when she stopped by to fetch a
friend for a road trip. “The first time I saw Mary Washington,
I fell in love,” she said.
But she arrived as a student without the prerequisites for
many upper-level subjects, such as entomology and animal
ecology. She had been a biology major at Allegheny College
in Pennsylvania, but her perfect score on the high school
AP exam allowed her to skip basic courses. Gembol “fought”
for her first advanced classes at UMW, she said, petitioning
professors for permission to jump ahead and take a course
overload of 19 hours. In fall 2006, she took four upper-level
biology classes, one physics class, and four labs.
“I lived in Jepson my first semester,” Gembol said.
More than two years later, Killian is glad she and other
professors took a chance on Gembol. She not only excelled
at academics, she worked hard for her peers. She was asked
to join Mortar Board, a national honor society for seniors,
and she took on the position of UMW-chapter president.
She was the student-faculty liaison for the Department of
Biological Sciences. And she received the Rebecca Culbertson
Stuart Memorial Scholarship for excellence in biology, the
“Rookie of the Year” Award for outstanding commitment
to community service, the Trustee Scholarship for academic
distinction, and the Dean’s Study Stipend for experiential
learning.
“Our concerns were totally misplaced,” Killian said. “She
hit the ground running and hasn’t stopped.”
When she talks about the road to
her Fulbright, Gembol mentions the
excellent classes and professors at Mary
Washington, but she also stresses the
rare chance to develop and carry out
independent, undergraduate research.
Simeone, too, had opportunities at UMW
that he didn’t dream he’d have as an undergraduate. He chose
the school because it had the potential to take him where he
wanted to go academically and personally. As a freshman,
he thought that meant a prestigious law school; what he
didn’t realize then was that being at Mary Washington
would shape his path and his destination.
“UMW allowed me to engage with the world, and I am
a more complete person because I was actively engaged,
because of what I [was] passionate about as a student,”
Simeone said. “I have gotten everything that I could have
wanted from Mary Washington.” d