Magnuson Scholars selected for 1998-99 academic year

Five of the six Magnuson Scholars met last week at a luncheon with Jermaine Magnuson (center), wife of the late Senator, and her daughter Juanita Garrison (standing, far right). Standing, from left, are Sergio Olivares; Bruce Ransom, chair of the Department of Neurology and holder of the Warren and Jermaine Magnuson Endowned Chair in Neurosciences; Zandrea Ambrose, and Michael Peck. Seated left of Mrs. Magnuson is Betty Sindelar; at her right is Song Ren. Jeff Hsing was out of town for a medical student clerkship. Photo by Jordan Rehm.

Six graduate students, one from each health sciences school, have been selected as Magnuson Scholars for the 1998-99 academic year. The late Senator Warren G. Magnuson, in whose name the program was established, was committed to improving the nation’s health through biomedical research and was instrumental in establishing the National Institutes of Health, Medicare and Medicaid during his long career in the senate.

Each of the students selected will receive $20,000 to support graduate studies and research.

This year’s scholars:

School of Dentistry—Betty Sindelar, a graduate student in bioengineering, is working on a research project she developed and implemented in conjunction with the School of Dentistry’s Department of Orthodontics. Also supported by National Institutes of Health funds, the project examines the loading effects, both normal and altered, on the temporomandibular joint (the joint between the skull and jaw). Born and raised in St. Louis, she graduated from Washington University there with a bachelor’s degree in physical therapy. While working as a physical therapist, she developed special expertise in evaluating and treating jaw joint problems. She was also an instructor in the Washington University Program in Physical Therapy. In 1990, she began graduate training at the UW.

School of Medicine—Jeff Hsing plans to pursue graduate studies in biomedical engineering after completing work for his medical degree. He was born in Taiwan and came to the United States at the age of 6. He was raised in Bellevue and after high school there entered the UW. He graduated in 1995 with honors and a bachelor’s degree in bioengineering. His long-term goal is to become an academic clinician with a biomedical research lab.

School of Nursing—Sergio A. Olivares was born and raised in Willcox, Ariz., and is the son of Mexican immigrants. He earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology and nursing from the University of Arizona in 1988 and a master’s degree in psychosocial nursing from the UW in 1994. For several years before entering graduate school, he worked for the Indian Health Service in northern Arizona and New Mexico. He is now a teaching assistant for the School of Nursing’s Psychosocial Nurse Practitioner Program and an American Nurses Association Ethnic/Racial Minority Fellow. The title of his research project and Ph.D. dissertation is “Chicano Communal Mental Health: A Northwest Historical Perspective.”

School of Pharmacy—Song Ren, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Pharmaceutics, was born in Fuzhou, China. She graduated from Nanjing High School and received a bachelor’s degree in pharmacy from Shanghai Medical University in 1992. After working as a pharmacist for a year in Jiangyin, she came to the UW School of Pharmacy for graduate training. She is a member of the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists and the International Society for the Study of Xenobiotics.

School of Public Health and Community Medicine—Zandrea Ambrose, a third-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Pathobiology, was born in Schweinfurt, Germany, but raised in Seattle. After graduating from Garfield High School, she attended Ohio Wesleyan University, where she majored in zoology and pre-medicine. She is conducting research in the laboratory of Dr. Marnix Bosch, assistant professor of pathobiology, on understanding mucosal immunity in nonhuman primate models of HIV-1 infection.

School of Social Work—Michael Peck is working toward a Ph.D. in social welfare while teaching social work practice to senior undergraduates. His academic and research interests are in health care, gerontology and quality-of-life issues. He is now working at Western State Hospital in Tacoma on a project applying hierarchical linear modeling to study incidence and injury of elderly psychiatric patients who fall. He is also examining how social work practice, as mediated by health care systems, impacts quality of life for older adults. In 1993 he earned a master’s degree in social work from the University of Southern California and a master of arts degree in Jewish Communal Service from Hebrew Union College. He has been a clinical social worker and a board member of Jewish Programs for the Disabled.

The Magnuson Scholars are selected on the basis of their academic performance and their potential contributions to research in the health sciences.

The scholars program is part of the Warren G. Magnuson Institute for Biomedical Research and Health Professional Training, established in 1991 in honor of the late senator. Support for the institute comes from two grants totaling nearly $5 million from the U.S. Department of Education, matching funds of $500,000 from the State of Washington, and more than $569,000 in donated funds.

The income from the endowment is used for research about diabetes and other diseases, to support students in graduate or postgraduate health professions training programs, and to fund the Warren and Jermaine Magnuson Chair in Medicine for Neurosciences, held by Dr. Bruce Ransom, chair of the Department of Neurology. ¶

Claire Dietz