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Students win Roozen Awards for scientific research

May. 7, 2024

Lakeland University’s science faculty recognized two research presentations for the second awarding of the Roozen ’66 Undergraduate Research Award in honor of the late Professor Allen Wangemann ’55.

The Roozen award is given to the best original scientific research presented at Lakeland’s Undergraduate Research and Scholarship Symposium which took place on Wednesday, April 17, and it comes with a $2,000 prize which will be split by this year’s winners.

This year’s winners were:

• Andrea Garcia, a senior biology major, for her research project titled, “Effects of Short-Term Starvation on Reproduction and Growth in Daphnia magna at Two Chlamydomonas reinhardtii ​Food Levels” which was conducted last summer with LU Professor of Biology Paul Pickhardt.
• Dakota Fenn, a senior biology major, and Kassidee Webb, a senior chemistry and biochemistry major, for their research titled, “Isoeugenol Synthesis and Purification as Determined by HPLC and UV-Vis Spectroscopy,” which was conducted in Associate Professor of Chemistry Jered McGivern’s organic chemistry course.

As a Lakeland student, the late Kenneth Roozen, Ph.D., was inspired by the late Allen Wangemann, a longtime, popular biology professor at Lakeland, to study biology, conduct undergraduate research and pursue post-graduate work. He later obtained his master’s and doctoral degrees in cellular biology and molecular genetics.

This inspiration led Roozen to a lifelong career in academic research and administration leadership throughout his tenure at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and the Medical University of South Carolina.

The award is intended to instill and inspire Lakeland students with the spirit of Wangemann, who created a tradition of original undergraduate science research at Lakeland.