2011-2012 Eldean Pierce Graduate Fellowship Award

Emilee Quinn Pilkington, winner of the 2011-2012 Eldean Pierce Graduate Fellowship

Each year, the ECU Chapter of Phi Kappa Phi sponsors a competition among graduating seniors for a fellowship to help fund their first year of graduate or professional study. Named in honor of a former chapter member and faculty member in Nursing, the award includes a fellowship of $1500 and a plaque.

The 2011-2012 Fellowship Winner is Emilee Quinn Pilkington. A native of Pikeville, NC, Emliee attended Charles B. Aycock high school. She was selected to be an EC Scholar and member of the Honors College. She was inducted into Phi Kappa Phi in 2010. Emilee will graduate summa cum laude this May with dual degrees: a B.S. in biology and a B.A. in chemistry. Emilee is did her senior honors thesis under the direction of Dr. Matthew Schrenk in the ECU Department of Biology. She examined microbial diversity in samples taken from high pH ecosystems in Canada, Italy and the U.S. She used the Therminal Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism technique to identify and characterize each microbe. She was awarded an ECU Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity grant to support this work which she presented on campus at the annual Research and Creative Activity week. As a first-year student, Emilee worke din the lab of Dr. Carol Goodwillie in biology to pinpoint polymorphisms in the DNA of flowering plant species. She won first place in the Natural Sciences category that year at ECU’s Research and Creative Activity week. During the summer of 2010, she worked in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the Brody School of Medicine. In the summer of 2009, she studied in London with the English department program on British History, Culture and Literature. Emilee has also been an active part of the ECU community, serving as a member of the ECU Ambassadors organization. She has hosted campus tours, spoken to alumni, helped to plan the annual special populations prom and been chairperson of the philanthropy committee, directing projects to raise funds for domestic violence and Relay for Life. Emilee has also been a volunteer tutor and a teaching assistant and an event leader for the eastern regional science Olympiad. She will attend the dental school at the University of North Carolina in the fall of 2012. She plans to become a general dentist and open a practice in a rural area of North Carolina. She would also like to travel and provide dental are to those in need in other countries.