Penn State Intercom......December 5, 2002

2 students win
Marshall scholarships

Nicholas Hartman, a Schreyer honors student majoring in chemistry with minors in biochemistry and molecular biology, and Annina Burns, a Schreyer scholar majoring in nutrition and media studies, have won Marshall Scholarships to study in the United Kingdom.

They are the first to win from Penn State since the mid 1990s and only the fifth and sixth Penn State students to win Marshall Scholarships since the scholarship program was started in 1953.

The first in his family to attend college, Hartman received the Woods Hole Fellowship to study with the Oceanographic Institute last summer with a team of researchers headquartered in Cape Cod, Mass.

For the past four years, Hartman has met with more than 800 students as part of a scientific outreach program that he developed for chemistry classes at his alma mater, Lebanon High School. Through this program, he encourages students to pursue advanced study in the sciences and engineering. As part of his presentation, he shows students a series of short films he produced and directed while at Penn State. He has volunteered on the Penn State Aquarium committee since 1999, and he was the first student at Penn State to use the aquarium to conduct experiments for coral reef research.

Hartman is a former president and vice president of the Penn State Nittany Chemical Society, which gave him the opportunity to develop and conduct other outreach programs such as the annual Halloween Chemistry Magic Show. His outreach efforts have helped in the development of teaching tools for chemistry, and he recently had a manuscript accepted for publication in the Journal of Chemical Education. He also is a student affiliate of the American Chemical Society.

Burns will spend the next few years studying comparative social policies in areas such as nutrition and health, specifically with regard to the welfare of child nutrition. While at Penn State, Burns started the Nutrition Service Project. Opting for an Alternative Spring Break she took the opportunity to visit schools in Mount Union to teach disadvantaged youth valuable health and nutrition lessons.

After studying abroad in Rome last spring, Burns extended her stay by earning an internship position at the United Nations headquarters in Rome working in the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) department and learning about international public health policies and malnutrition across the globe.

Burns also has worked for both the National Institutes of Health and CNN. As a high school freshman she was featured in Time magazine as a student who is making a difference after starting an after-school play group for children living in a shelter outside of Washington, D.C. She also is a Lion Ambassador.

The Marshall Scholarships began in 1953 as a gesture of thanks from the British government for the United States' assistance in rebuilding Europe after World War II. Each year, 40 scholars are selected to spend two years in graduate school at a British University, with all fees, living expenses, books, cost of thesis and research, fares to and from the United States, and daily travel paid by the British government.

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