Rising HUHC Stars

Rachael Higgins ’09, a fine arts major at Hofstra University, received a full scholarship to the prestigious Idyllwild Arts Center Summer Program. Higgins, 20, resides with her family in Pennsauken, New Jersey, and will be a senior this fall at Hofstra.

For 50 years, the Idyllwild Summer Program, a very prestigious arts colony located approximately 40 miles outside of Los Angeles in Idyllwild, California, has offered children, teens and adults unique opportunities in the visual arts, creative writing, dance, music and theater – taught by some of America’s finest artists. Higgins was recommended for the scholarship by Professor of Fine Arts Laurie Fendrich and Visiting Professor of Fine Arts Peter Plagens, a painter and former staff art critic for Newsweek, who taught a seminar in the Comparative Arts and Culture program this past spring. Higgins says she hopes the experience at Idyllwild will allow her to strengthen her portfolio.

She describes her painting style as “spatially involved.” In the art studio at Hofstra’s Calkins Hall, she often brings in sketches, pictures and shapes that interest and inspire her work. As for her career plans, Higgins says, “My goal is to become a painter and to be able to live off my work, but I have also thought about teaching art at the high school or collegiate level.”

David Miller ’08, of East Meadow, New York, has received a three-year National Science Foundation grant to conduct research in environmental engineering.

Miller, who graduated Phi Beta Kappa and was an applied physics major with a concentration in engineering, also won a full scholarship to Princeton University for a Ph.D. tract. The National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program grant totals $40,500 a year for three years, of which $30,000 goes to Miller for living expenses and $10,500 goes to Princeton to offset educational expenses.

Miller, who recently gave a presentation for Hofstra University Honors College titled “Applying Physics to the Environment: Measuring Atmospheric Organic Nitrogen Deposition and Assessing Human Influences,” said the exact nature of his research at Princeton will be determined once he meets with his advisers at the college.

“I feel extremely honored to be receiving such a fellowship,” Miller said. “It will give me the opportunity to contribute, in my own way, to solving the multifaceted environmental problems the world currently faces through meaningful and desperately needed environmental research. I believe these solutions must eventually be harnessed to achieve sustainability because the costs of environmental degradation to our planet are simply too large if we look the other way.”

“The highly competitive NSF Graduate Fellowships are awarded to the most promising science students in the United States at the beginning of their graduate careers,” said Harold M. Hastings, Ph.D., chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy. “The NSF Graduate Fellowship program is designed to recognize their outstanding achievements and to provide full support for research-intensive graduate study.”

Joseph Pawlowski ’08, has been awarded a Fulbright scholarship to conduct bio-mathematical research in Italy. The grant covers the period from October 10, 2008, to July 10, 2009.

Prior to his May graduation, the Bellmore, Long Island, resident won Hofstra’s Outstanding Graduating Senior Mathematics Award and another award from the Mathematics Department for his work tutoring other students.

During his senior year at Hofstra, Pawlowski was searching for a research project that would marry his interests in mathematics and science. He contacted Professor Patrizia Lavia of the University La Sapienza in Rome, who was working with other scientists on mathematical models for Ran-binding protein, which regulates various processes in the human cell, including cell growth and cell differentiation. Pawlowski said the research caught his interest because of its implications for cancer therapies. “I was interested, and I wrote up a proposal to work with her,” he said. The Fulbright scholarship will cover Pawlowski’s living and travel expenses.

“Joseph was my student in two classes, ‘Introduction to Higher Mathematics’ and ‘Number Theory.’ He is truly an outstanding young man, who is both talented and hard-working, yet modest and unassuming, said Mathematics Chair Marysia T. Weiss, who wrote a letter of recommendation on Pawlowski’s behalf, as did his Culture & Expression instructor, Associate Dean Neil Donahue.