Scholarship Recipients 1998

Laurie SchaffnerElizabeth B. Reed award

is the 1998 recipient of the prestigious Elizabeth B. Reed award. She received her BA degree in Sociology from Smith College and was elected to PBK in 1995. She is now a candidate for the PhD degree in Sociology at UC Berkeley. Her dissertation research is focused on female juvenile delinquency. She states that "there is not much work that focuses on teenaged girls and their offending behaviors". She holds that research about juvenile delinquency begins with males and then is generalized to include females. Ms. Schaffner maintains that juvenile delinquency needs to be retrieved from its male's eye view. She plans to remedy this problem in part by interviewing fifty girls in detention facilities and fifty case files of girls on probation. 

David B. Barkin

received his BS degree in Engineering Sciences from Harvard University and was elected to PBK in 1997. He is now a candidate for the PhD degree in Electrical Engineering at Stanford University. He is doing research on some of the most advanced needs and developments in the fields of computer and communications technology. such as the development of integrated circuitry for private and commercial use. After his PhD, he plans to move "into research and development of custom designed integrated circuitry for communication specific tasks". 

Faith P. Barrett 

received her BA degree in Comparative Literature from Swarthmore College and was elected to PBK in 1987. She is now a candidate for the PhD degree in Comparative Literature at UC Berkeley. Her research is centered on the works of Emily Dickinson. In her dissertation she addresses theological and ethical questions contained in Dickinson's poems. Specifically she examines Dickinson's question "how is it possible for a human being to address God?" and "is it possible for one human being to address another?" 

Jennifer A. Brown 

received her bachelor's degree in Biology at UCLA and was elected to PBK in 1995. She is now a candidate for the PhD degree in Biology at UC Santa Cruz. She is doing valuable research on conserving biodiversity in the terrestrial environment with focus on the marine environment. She is seeking to identify the movement of fish populations, to determine dispersal patterns of certain species, and to evaluate development of a harvest reserve to supplement harvested populations.

Keith M. Chapin

received his BA degree in Music at Yale University in 1992. He was elected to PBK in 1991. He is now a candidate for the PhD degree in Musicology at Stanford University. He is an accomplished performer on the viola and in chamber music. He indicates that his dissertation work on the metaphysics of counterpoint will demonstrate some of the aesthetic foundations of music theory.

Carolyn E. Chen 

eceived her BA degree in Sociology from Brown University and was initiated into PBK in 1992. She is now a candidate for the PhD degree in Sociology and is working on her dissertation which in her own words "examines the high rates of conversion to evangelical Protestantism among Asian American immigrants in contemporary America".

Dr. Murray L. Eiland III

received his BA degree in Ancient Near Eastern Archaeology and Art History and was initiated into PBK at UC Berkeley in 1990. He received his Ph.D. in Oriental Archaeology from Oxford University in the United Kingdom. He is now pursuing an MS degree in Earth Sciences at UC Santa Cruz where he is working on applying modern methods of analysis such as infra-red spectroscopy to archaeological ceramics. His objective is to unite science with archaeology to facilitate the analysis and evaluation of ceramic samples.

Eric S. Gawiser 

received his bachelor's degree in Physics and Public Policy from Princeton University and was elected to PBK in 1994. He is now a candidate for the PhD degree in Physics at UC Berkeley. He is performing research in cosmology and astrophysics with a specialization in investigating the history of structure formation in the universe.

Deborah G. Goldman

received her BA degree in mathematics from MIT and was elected to PBK in 1991. She is now a candidate for the PhD degree in Mathematics at UC Berkeley, but her dissertation will explore a field of theoretical computer science known as approximation. This is the process of finding approximate answers to intractable problems that cannot be solved in a reasonable amount of time

Ryan A. Harris

received his BA degree in Psychology at Stanford University and was initiated into PBK in 1993. He is now a candidate for the M.D. degree at UC San Francisco. His faculty have highest praise for his abilities as a creative and innovative researcher and analyst. In the past five years he has done extensive research in areas such as women's health issues, outpatient gastroenterology, the HIV virus, including the screening of health professionals for presence of the disease, and cardiology. He has published numerous articles and papers. According to his faculty he seems destined to be a "productive, independent investigator and a leader in his chosen field".

Meredyth A. Krych

received her BA degree in Linguistics and Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania and was elected to PBK in 1995. She is now a candidate for the PhD degree in Cognitive Psychology at Stanford University. Her research area involves "the influence of word choice in biasing human memory for observed events... Her interest is to "identify particular representations and processes which are influenced by language... this has implications for understanding the relationship between the way concepts are encoded in language and people's subsequent cognition".

Peter L. Mallios

received his BA degree in English and Economics at UC Berkeley and was elected to in 1990. He is now a candidate for the PhD degree in English and American literature at Stanford University. His dissertation studies Peter Conrad and James Faulkner as the two fiction writers who most adventurously carried the genre of romance fiction into the modernist period.

Julie B. Morrison 

received her BA degree in Psychology from Texas Christian University and was elected to PBK in 1994. She is now a candidate for the PhD degree in Cognitive Psychology at Stanford University. Her primary research investigates what she refers to as "the human body scheme", namely our own "mental representation of our bodies (as we use them) in perception and action". She indicates that "It has been proposed that the concept of the body scheme serves important functions for perception and action." She is studying what kinds of ideas this concept might convey in differing kinds of situations.

Qi Wang 

received her bachelor's degree in Biology from Amherst College in 1994. She was elected to PBK in 1993. She is now a candidate for the PhD degree in Immunology at UC San Francisco. Her research has centered on study of the mechanisms by which one family of factors from the nervous system alter the functions of the major cells of immunity (T cells). She has developed a genetic procedure for studying the roles of certain T cells in protective and disease-producing immune reactions that is attracting national attention.