For more information on how to establish a University Fellowship at
St. Lawrence University with a gift of $100,000 for an endowed fund,
or $6,000 for an expendable fund, contact Tom Pynchon at tpynchon@
stlawu.edu or 315-229-5582.
As she gets ready to apply for medical school ,
Amy Yao ’14 wants to set herself apart from the other applicants. One
way she is doing that is by researching lung development in
Xenopus
laevis
tadpoles with Associate Professor of Biology Mike Temkin and
Assistant Professor of Biology Alex Schreiber as part of the St. Law-
rence University Fellows Program.
“The research is amazing because the lung development in those
tadpoles closely mirrors that of human fetal lung devel-
opment, and it’s a field that is only beginning to be
explored,” she says.
Amy, one of 56 fellows this past summer, had
been conducting research with Temkin and Sch-
reiber for more than a year before the fellowship
began. “They treat me like a colleague instead
of a student researcher; everything I say and
propose has equal weight to theirs,” she explains.
“The personal attention from mentors as wildly
intelligent as Mike and Alex has been nothing
short of phenomenal.”
While working with Amy, Schreiber was also mentoring
six other students, three of them fellowship recipients. Amy is one
of 16 fellows he’s worked with during the last five summers.
“The summer research experience provides students with a realistic
understanding of what life in graduate school or a professional research
environment is actually like,” Schreiber says. “By the end of their ex-
perience, they will know if they have both the aptitude and the passion
for research. If they decide to pursue a research career after St. Law-
rence, they will leave here not only with a tremendous head start, but
also with the experience and confidence to match.”
What surprises most people is learning that the University Fellows pro-
gram is completely donor-funded. In addition to conducting research
and working closely with professors, students receive a stipend and are
provided housing on campus.
The need for gifts has increased considerably; the number of applica-
tions has doubled over the last several years as more students apply to
take advantage of the opportunity. Nancy Piskor Twichell and David
C. Twichell Jr. P’06 are among those who have given to the fellows
program.
“Our parents instilled in us the importance of getting a good
education and a commitment to helping others do the
same,” the Twichells wrote. “At St. Lawrence, our son Na-
than ’06 not only received an excellent education but was
also awarded a fellowship to do independent research. It
was one of the highlights of his education. We wanted
other students to receive the same opportunity, so after
Nate graduated, we established the Piskor Family Univer-
sity Fellows Endowment to support student research in the
sciences.”
Their gifts open doors for students like Amy to make discov-
eries no scientist — let alone undergraduate researchers — have
uncovered before. “The coolest — and most difficult — part of our
research is that we’re the pioneers of the field; no one has ever studied
it before,” Amy says. “We were the first people to see fluorescent im-
munohistochemical stains of frog lung surfactant protein (an essential
protein for lung function) ever. If that isn’t incredible, I don’t know
what is.”
Amy Yao ’14
