Caleigh Charlebois
Name: Caleigh Charlebois
Major(s): Zoology, Minor in Professional Writing
Year in school: 4th year, Undergraduate
Scholarship received: Goldwater Scholarship
Year received: 2020
General Questions:
How did you first hear about this scholarship?
I know the previous recipients of the award, and attended a summer program with one of them. He recommended the scholarship to me. I attended a workshop with Nives and applied after that!
Do you remember where you were when you found out you had received the scholarship? If so, where? Tell us the story!
I had just heard that I couldn’t do anything for the summer because of COVID, but then I got the email about the Goldwater, so that was really nice. I had applied for multiple programs around the same time, and the rest of them had all been cancelled. It was a nice consolation to receive the email telling me that I had received the Goldwater.
Did you travel for/because of this scholarship? If so, where?
No, unfortunately COVID made travel very difficult!
How did your scholarship change because of COVID-19?
COVID hasn’t changed much in the way of the scholarship for me. I am using the funding to pay for my living expenses, so that I can focus on school and research. The experience of online schooling was not a new experience for me. I was diagnosed with cancer a few years ago and had to attend classes virtually and wear a mask in public for my own safety. These precautionary measures are familiar to me!
What was your favorite aspect of the scholarship experience? (Ex. travel, experiences, learning a new language, research opportunities, etc.)
This was the first experience that forced me to work on a piece of writing collaboratively with my advisors, which was an excellent learning experience. Learning to write about my research for a more general audience and being able to polish my writing are both skills that I gained from this experience. I loved when my advisors disagreed about how best to approach the writing and what to include, because it showed me that there is no one “right way” to approach your own writing.
Did receiving this scholarship affect your future academic and/or career goals?
I think in order to write this application, you have to think hard about whether or not you want a career and science, and what that will look like. Receiving the scholarship probably made it easier to reach my goals, but writing it [the application] was what forced me to really think about how that would happen.
What advice do you have for others who may be interested in applying for this scholarship?
If you have any kind of research experience that you can write the essay about, you should probably apply. As long as you have the time to work on the application, this will be beneficial for you. It also encourages you to think about yourself as a future researcher.
Thinking about framing your research in the context of science and the pursuit of knowledge in your life is really important. I think part of the reason that I received the scholarship is because I was able to connect my research to my own life and experiences, which gave it more background. One of my advisors, Robert Wheeler, gave me that advice, and it paid off! Listen to your advisors and the advisors for the scholarship, they will be immensely helpful to you.