Spectrum - Volume 19 Issue 18 January 30, 1997 - NSF graduate students select university

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NSF graduate students select university

By Susan Trulove

Spectrum Volume 19 Issue 18 - January 30, 1997

Carey Buxton of Lexington, Ky., and Maureen McArthur of Thousand Oaks, Calif., recipients of National Science Foundation Fellowships, have elected to do their graduate studies at Virginia Tech.

"These students can go anywhere," said Len Peters, vice provost for research and dean of the Graduate School. "It is a mark of quality when they choose Virginia Tech-a stamp of academic approval on a national scale."

Buxton, a doctoral electrical-engineering major, will work on antennas with the wireless-engineering group at Virginia Tech. "I came to Virginia Tech because of the antenna research. I enjoyed talking to the professors and I love this area."

While a student at the University of Kentucky, where she earned bachelor's and master's degrees in electrical engineering, she worked at NASA on the magnetic suspension test fixture, which suspends a model inside a wind tunnel, and became interested in electromagnetics. Her goal is to become a university professor.

Buxton is a member of IEEE, the Society of Women Engineers, Tau Beta Pi engineering honor society, and Eta Kappa Nu electrical engineering honor society.

McArthur is doing her Ph.D. work with the Center for Science and Technology Studies. She is looking at university and industry relations and how faculty research and the university are changing. "I was working at a small company, setting up contracts and doing a lot of business with universities. There were questions that intrigued me, such as, Are faculty research efforts being redirected? Is teaching changing? How are faculty members balancing entrepreneurship and teaching?"

She says she is also interested in "examining the function of scientific and social institutions in the development, dissemination, and application of science and technology and the popularization of science."

McArthur's undergraduate degree is in biology from the University of California at Los Angeles. She is a member of Phi Beta Kappa.