By: Jessica Didow
Three Penn State Berks students received the college’s most prestigious academic award in May 2011. Razvan Viteazu, Dwight Kizun, and Andrew Peifer received the Young Investigator Award, presented to students who have demonstrated outstanding scholarship and performance or unusual achievement during the course of their internship, co-op, or research.
In the Division of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, Viteazu, an American Studies major, received the award for his work titled “America and the League of Nations: From a World of Promise, to Failure and Collapse,” which focuses on determining if American involvement in the League could have stopped Japanese aggression in Asia, which escalated in the 1930s and brought the nation to war with the United States in 1941.
Viteazu’s adviser, Dr. Michelle A. Mart, Associate Professor of History, commented that his work “investigated the U.S. relationship with the League of Nations through the analysis of numerous primary documents and government sources. Unlike most undergraduate papers, Viteazu’s study used the type of sophisticated analysis that is expected in graduate school.”
Kizun, an Electro-Mechanical Engineering Technology major, was the award winner in the Division of Engineering, Business, and Computing. His faculty adviser, Dr. Rungun Nathan, Assistant Professor of Engineering, nominated him for the award because he completed nine honors projects that went beyond the typical course requirements. Nathan commented, “Dwight has been involved with my research and has constantly outperformed in every aspect.”
An honors project begins with the student proposing an idea or concept to the course professor that will allow him or her to research and explore material in greater depth. The scope of these projects included engineering mechanics, logic control, circuit design, and industrial engineering.
“These projects required determination, self-motivation, and the desire to challenge myself, as well as question my research initiatives,” commented Kizun.
The work from his study titled “The Influence of Salt on a 250 Million-Year-Old Organism” earned Pefier, a Biology major, the award for the Division of Science. This study examines Halosimplex carlsbadense, a rod shaped, obligate aerobe found in a 250 million-year-old salt deposit located in Carlsbad, New Mexico. This microbe flourishes in high salt environments. Halosimplex has three genes, referred to as A, B, and C, that are needed for cell survival. Peifer’s study examined the expression of these genes in various salt concentrations both above and below the optimum levels for growth.
According to his faculty adviser Dr. Tami Mysliwiec, Associate Professor of Biology, Peifer’s research showed that during growth under optimal conditions, gene A is expressed, but in salt concentrations below the optimum levels, gene C is preferentially expressed. It is still unclear the purpose of this switching mechanism, however Peifer hypothesizes that the product of gene C expression is better able to function under environmental stress.
In addition to the Young Investigator’s Award, Peifer was also awarded an American Society for Microbiology Undergraduate Research Fellowship for his research project. This fellowship is aimed at highly competitive students who wish to pursue graduate careers in microbiology.
After giving a short presentation describing their projects, Viteazu, Kizun, and Peifer were honored at the Academic Achievement Awards Ceremony in May 2011. They received a plaque and a check for $100, and their names will be placed on a permanent plaque displayed in the Thun Library.