March 4, 2008
Young astronomer is one of honors program’s award winners
From left, Honors Scholar Award winners: Mara Theophila, Claire Roby, Sonya Hetrick, Mark Meyer, Johanna Teske, David Moak, with University Honors Program director Michael Mass and associate director Paula McCabe (Photo by Jeff Watts)
Johanna Teske has a future in the stars. The physics major, who is perusing clouds of space dust for signs of fledgling planets as her Honors Senior Capstone, has acquired such expertise that she recently flew to Hong Kong for a conference on organic matter in space.
If there were any other undergraduates at the conference, Teske didn’t meet them. She was too busying talking with scientists about hunting for clues to the birth of planets in faraway galaxies, or even, perhaps, for the molecules associated with life.
Last week, fresh from Hong Kong, Teske was awarded an Honors Scholar Award at the program’s annual Honors Award Ceremony, which recognized the work of some of AU’s varied and impressive students in the University Honors Program.
Students honored for top work in University Honors Program Stellar students abounded at the University Honors Program annual Honors Award Ceremony. There was John O’Trakoun ’08, who delivered a sermon in English and Lao when he was ordained a Buddhist monk last summer. The statistics and international studies major speaks French, Mandarin Chinese, Lao, and Thai, some of it honed while studying in Beijing. Named Outstanding Senior, he will soon be starting his doctorate in economics. There was statistics major Mark Meyer ’08, an Honors Scholar Award recipient who is a conference veteran; his professional presentations have included the talk “The Value of Entertainment in Mathematics.” A summer internship at the National Institutes of Health in biostatisics research is leading him to begin a postbaccalaureate program there this fall. The students’ range of interests is vast, from archival research in England and France (David Moak ’08) to work with Native Americans (Caroline Johnson ’09), to scholarly work on economics policies supporting environmental sustainability (Sonya Hetrick ’08). Awards were given to outstanding honors students in each undergraduate year, along with awards for Outstanding Leadership in the Honors Community and Honors Scholar Awards. SIS professor Abdul Aziz Said, pictured with Paula McCabe and Michael Mass, was named Honors Professor the Year.
Awards to AU staff for Outstanding Contribution to the Honors Community were given to the Career Center’s Joan Echols, the Center for Teaching Excellence team that created the Model Classroom in Hurst Hall; and SIS academic advisor Julie Wickham. |
The AU honors program enrolls about 18 percent of the university’s undergraduates, or just under 1,000 students, who take about a quarter of their credits in small honors classes. Some join the program when they arrive at AU, while others win admission later because of their work at the university. The annual awards ceremony recognizes outstanding students at each level.
Teske has been spending much of her senior year doing research at the Carnegie Institution for Science in northwest Washington, D.C. She began the work in organic chemistry class during sophomore year, when she did some research for extra credit on polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, complex molecules that may have been precursors to life on our planet, and could be in other systems as well.
Her research was good enough to present at a conference.
She was hooked. “I thought, wow, I’d like to do more about this,” she said.
After studying abroad in London, where she completed a year-long practical astronomy course in one semester, and returning to AU to work under the guidance of physics professor Nathan Harshman, “my best and most favorite professor ever,” she was ready to take the initiative for a capstone project that would enable her to pursue her interests in depth.
An Honors Senior Capstone is a scholarly project that builds on the students’ interests and can range from performing a theatrical piece to conducting archival research—or, in Teske’s case, exploring outer space. Proactive students often find that scientists at Washington institutions are eager to engage AU students in their work.
“Last spring, I ‘cold–e-mailed’ people [at the Carnegie Institution] saying, ‘This is who I am, and I’d like to do research for my capstone.’ A bunch of people e-mailed me back and said, ‘We’re totally interested. Come and visit. We have a bunch of projects you can work on.’”
She has ended up analyzing the wavelengths of light from a star to determine if they reveal key elements that wouldn’t be there if the star was alone in space. Her findings show there’s something else with the stars. But what is it?
“A lot of what I’m seeing is iron, magnesium, and titanium,” she said, speaking of the wavelengths and their “chemical fingerprints” that reveal what elements are present so far away. “What makes this interesting is that most of the star itself is made of helium and hydrogen and carbon, maybe nitrogen. So what I’m actually looking at is signatures of something else around the star.”
Teske, and her professional advisors, think she’s looking at circumstellar discs, which are clouds of gas and dust that can turn into something more gaseous or solid, eventually forming a planetesimal, and perhaps even a planet. In brief, she could be looking at an early stage in the evolution of a gas giant. A future Jupiter or Saturn, elsewhere in the universe.
There’s still an enormous amount to be learned, and Teske is up to the task. She plans to continue in graduate school next fall and has already been accepted by several top national programs.
Teske has also worked as an intern for the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, where she developed mathematical programs to plot photon orbits near or inside black holes, and conducted independent research in astrochemistry at the Harvard-Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory.
Someday, she may well be presenting her findings at conferences attended by the many astronomers and physicists she has worked with as an undergraduate.
