Bailey Prize winner Desirée Plata
'03 says she didn't think she had the credentials for the prize that recognizes
the “greatest service to the College in any field.”
A self-styled student leader who
never sought campus-wide elected office, the chemistry major says, “I've tried to
add to the campus just by being myself.”
“Being myself” includes secretary of U-MED, the student
EMS organization; manager and president of the Coffee House; general manager of
WRUC; member of the U2K steering committee; president of the Chemistry Club;
chemistry tutor; and teacher in Mad Science, an off-campus program that does
science shows for children.
Plata, a research veteran who has
presented at a number of conferences, says she can't help noticing that when it
comes to working in a lab or presenting research, Union students seem to be
more at ease than their counterparts at larger institutions.
“Because we're a smaller school,
we have access to the faculty and we get our hands on all the equipment,” she
said. “That doesn't happen at other schools. They can put us in a lab and we
know our way around. And we present our research all the time.”
A chemistry major with minors in
math and biology, Plata will enroll this year in MIT's Ph.D. program in
chemical oceanography at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. She did research
last summer at Woods Hole on diesel fuel contamination during a summer student
fellowship from the National Science Foundation.
Among her other honors, the Union
Scholar received the George Catlin Prize for high scholastic standing and
promise in graduate study and college teaching; and the Robert Fuller Prize for
the chemistry senior with outstanding research work. Plata also received an
honorable mention as a finalist for the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. She
was recently elected to Phi Beta Kappa.
Last year (with Will Johnson '02),
she was named a Barry M. Goldwater Scholar. The prestigious award supports
promising scientists, mathematicians and engineers with a $7,500 stipend for
each of their remaining years of undergraduate study.
Advised by Prof. Mary Carroll, Plata is a member of the
Aerogel Research Team, a research collaboration of mechanical engineering and
chemistry. She specialized in developing aerogel oxygen sensors. She also did
research on fresh water fish communication and the effects of acid rain. She
was co-author with Prof. James Adrian and former Prof. Grant Brown of a paper
on that project in the Journal of
Chemical Ecology & Behavior.
Plata, a native of Portland,
Maine, did terms aboard in Panama
and Kenya,
experiences that she says are the envy of her counterparts at other
institutions.
A frequent panelist at admissions
open houses, Plata advises prospective students to take advantage of all the
intellectual and social opportunities that await. “I tell them, 'Just do what
you think is fun.'”