Today BRILLIANTLY GREEN
Pass it on: Great things are happening at UNT. Learn about them here and share our successes with your family and friends.
• Changing lives through music. College of Music performance and jazz studies doctoral student Daniel Pinilla (’15 M.A.) won the $10,000 top prize in UNT’s 2017 Sherman-Barsanti Inspiration Awards. Pinilla was awarded the honor for his project to develop a series of music workshops for children in rural Colombia who have been traumatized by armed conflict. • Out of this world. Joanna Feaster, a senior at UNT’s Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science, had 21 hours to work with a team and create a plan for a human settlement on the planet Mercury during a regional Space Settlement Design Competition this spring at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. Her team won and she is one of six students from her competing group who will attend this summer’s international competition at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. “I want to be an aerospace engineer, which is why I was super psyched about this competition,” Feaster says. “I hope to work for NASA someday.” • Social media scholarship. Ethan Waldrip, a 2017 high school graduate from Haltom City, received a $10,000 scholarship from UNT President Neal Smatresk for becoming the 10,000th follower of the @UNTPrez Twitter account during the fall UNT Preview event. Waldrip plans to major in a STEM field and attended Preview to learn more about UNT’s biomedical engineering program.
Michael Clements
Michael Clements
Goldwater honors
Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science student Amber Lu (’17 TAMS) was named a 2017 Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship winner, and an honorable mention was awarded to Prateek Kalakuntla
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(’17 TAMS). Both graduated from TAMS in May. Lu, a 16-year-old from Sugar Land, worked on research with chemistry professor William Acree to find the best way to purify fossil fuels and was named a Siemens semifinalist in 2016. UNT has produced 60 Goldwater Scholars since 1996, leading all Texas universities. Goldwater awards are considered to be among the country’s most prestigious scholarships awarded to students planning careers in
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Summer 2017
mathematics, science and engineering. Counseling fellowship
Doctoral student Ana Guadalupe Reyes received a $20,000 fellowship from the National Board for Certified Counselors that will provide funding and training and will facilitate her service to underserved minority populations. Reyes is a doctoral student in the College of Education counseling program specializing in equine-assisted psycho-
therapy and LGBTQ+ issues. The fellowship will help her receive further training and complete her dissertation in equine-assisted psychotherapy with underrepresented populations. She is one of 22 students selected for the fellowship. “I’m the daughter of two immigrants,” Reyes says. “This fellowship recognizes the sacrifices my parents made to provide me with a better education.”