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First came the Truman Scholarship announcement in April, followed almost immediately by the one about the Goldwater Scholarship and then the one about the Fulbright U.S. Student Program.

These are some of the most prestigious national and international scholarships for U.S. college students. Three of the Drexel University students who received these awards are longtime members of Drexel’s Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (LSAMP) program for underrepresented minority students in STEM disciplines. Four other Dragons received Fulbrights, and three other Dragons received the Goldwater Scholarship.

For those students, the awards were both recognitions of their past accomplishments and a gateway into their next steps into graduate school and post-graduate research. For Drexel’s LSAMP Director Marisol Rodriguez Mergenthal, it was a huge and well-deserved accomplishment and pay-off for the students she’s worked with for months and years — and not just for those specific opportunities either.

“Is it serendipitous that three students got these big awards all at the same time? Yes, but it doesn’t surprise me that these students were all in the center of this,” she said.

Those Dragons are:

• Sky Harper, chemistry ‘24, who won the Truman Scholarship, which awards up to $30,000 toward a graduate degree in public-service related fields. Similar to a fellowship, Truman also provides career and professional development opportunities, including internships. The Truman is given to about 50 students per year. Harper previously received the 2022-2023 Goldwater Fellowship and the Udall Fellowship in 2022.
• Julian Marmo, electrical and computer engineering ‘24, who received the Goldwater Scholarship, which supports students who pursue research careers and foster excellence in STEM fields and funds his final year of undergraduate study. The Goldwater is given to about 400 STEM students per year.
• Daouda Njie, environmental science ‘22, who received a Fulbright Study/Research Grant for a year of paid research to study sea grass meadows in Fiji. As one of the largest academic exchanges in the world, the Fulbright U.S. Student Program provides over 2,000 grants per year in 140 countries.

She met those students during their first terms at Drexel, and has helped them along their academic, research and career journeys at the University, as she does with all undergraduate students who meet LSAMP requirements. She connects them not only to the LSAMP community to meet with peers on similar journeys, but also to resources and people across Drexel.

For her, that means getting to know students on and off their résumés and CVs and transcripts, and reviewing and promoting their excellence however they need it. That can involve everything from putting them in touch with a specific contact for help or guidance to reviewing applications for specific programs. Many of these students have received multiple external awards and scholarships as well as internal opportunities at Drexel, like the STAR (Students Tackling Advanced Research) Scholars Program for first-year research, which Harper and Njie participated in.

“These students are doing the work and connecting the dots between opportunities and resources, which aren’t always linear and isn’t always easy,” she said.

One of those connections is with Leah Gates, associate director in Drexel’s Undergraduate Research & Enrichment Programs (UREP), which oversees support for internal and external student research and scholarship opportunities and also helps students find faculty mentors, research opportunities and funding. UREP and LSAMP overlap on and promote various student opportunities, and Gates and Rodriguez Mergenthal both work closely to provide support and connections to students. As such, in her role as a fellowships adviser, Gates worked closely with all three students for months leading up to individual application deadlines, and for years as they continually apply for opportunities through UREP.

“It is really satisfying to see how students are benefiting from the structures of support we have been working with partners like LSAMP to build, so now those students use the resources, opportunities and encouragement they receive at each stage of their journey as a foundation from which to build their next steps. That’s what we want to continue building for students in the future,” said Gates.

Click here to learn more about these three Dragons and how they have been involved with LSAMP.