Engineering student wins prestigious NSF fellowship

When Amanda Ackerman, EG ’07, started working in the laboratory of Herbert Allen, professor of civil and environmental engineering, during her freshman year, she didn’t realize that the experience would turn out to be life-changing.

At the time, she wasn’t doing much more than preparing solutions and weighing soil. But that humble start led to an active undergraduate career, which now, four years later, has culminated in her being selected for a prestigious graduate research fellowship from the National Science Foundation (NSF).

The fellowships, which pay a stipend of $30,000 a year in addition to tuition and fees, are highly competitive.

Ackerman will use the money to study environmental engineering at the University of California at Berkeley. Although she is unsure of the exact focus of her doctoral research, she is interested in the area of environmental chemistry and continues to have an interest in the work she did at UD, which focused on the effects of soil properties on dissolved organic matter.

Ackerman credits Allen with her decision to go to graduate school. Allen, in turn, refers to Ackerman as the top undergraduate he has encountered in more than 30 years of teaching.

Ackerman says she found the research process to be extremely rewarding. “I was treated with respect as a contributor to the research, and I loved the experience of learning through seeing, touching and feeling,” she says.

NSF accords honorable mention to applicants who merit graduate research fellowships but to whom awards cannot be made because funds are not available. Three UD alumni received an honorable mention, which is considered a significant academic achievement. They are Andrew Seagraves, EG ’07, Eric Pridgen, EG ’03, and Daniel Roche, AS ’06.