UA Senior Honored by Selection into Prestigious Fellowship Program

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Robyn Thomas, a senior from Trussville majoring in biological sciences at The University of Alabama, has been selected as a recipient of a highly prestigious Amgen Fellowship with the Teach For America program.

Each year only 50 people across the country are selected from the Teach For America recruits for the Amgen Fellowship positions.

Dr. Guy Caldwell, UA associate professor of biological sciences, provided a strong recommendation for Thomas’ entrance into the program. Thomas has worked under his direction in his research laboratory since 2004. Caldwell refers to Thomas as a “highly dedicated and talented young woman.”

In 2006, the Teach For America program only accepted 12.6 percent of the 19,000 applicants. The application process is very competitive and acceptance is highly coveted. Teach For America is named among the top 10 entry level employers of college graduates, according to CollegeGrad.com.

Amgen partners with Teach For America to help improve the quality of math and science education in America’s underserved public schools. The Amgen Fellowship is a grant from the Amgen Foundation specifically to support the aim of doubling the number of college math and science graduates who join Teach For America as corps members by 2010.

Thomas has been a member of the Caldwell Lab on campus since 2004, when she was accepted as an intern of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. She has juggled various projects over the years. The first was an investigation into the role of a protein
called NUD-1 (implicated in breast and prostate cancers) in cell division, where she was working closely with Dr. Kim Caldwell, assistant professor of biological sciences, on a project funded by the National Institutes of Health. Next, Thomas worked on a project pertaining to Parkinson’s disease and became part of a three-stop drug pipeline to “STOP-PD.” Currently she is working on a project that investigates the relationship between polyunsaturated fatty acids and the human gene torsinA, a protein linked to another human movement disorder called dystonia.

At the Capstone, Thomas is the executive vice president for the National Society of Collegiate Scholars and she has served on their executive board for the last three years. Thomas serves as the vice president of projects for Golden Key International Honour Society. She has been involved with Alabama Action since her freshmen year to serve as a student leader in this service-learning group that interacts with low-income elementary students in the Tuscaloosa area. Thomas also currently serves as editor-in-chief of JOSHUA, the Journal of Science and Health at The University of Alabama.

Thomas is a member of the Blount Undergraduate Initiative and the University Honors Program. She is also active as an ambassador for the UA College of Arts and Sciences, a position in which she serves the University by recruiting new students. Thomas is a lifetime member of the Girl Scouts of America and thinks any mention of the service work she has done in college “must always report back to the original values and attitudes [she] learned during those exciting years.”

Other UA students who have been accepted into the Teach For America program include Rebecca Buchanan, Kori Mosakowski, Lindsay Maples and Stevie Rogers.