Third Place Winner
Meg Lemons, Senior
Veterinary Research Lab Assistant, Large Animal Medicine
Major: Biological Science, minor in Spanish and Avian Biology
Hometown: Salt Lake City, Utah
Meg impressed immediately with her poise, intelligence, and initiative. Of the approximately 35 veterinary students and 15 undergraduate students that have worked in my lab over the past eight years, Meg is THE MOST responsible, organized, intellectually curious and astute student I have encountered.
Our lab is somewhat unique as it requires many basic science benchtop skills, but also animal handling and sample collection from horses. Meg has participated in blood and bronchoalveolar lavage sample collection and physical examinations on horses and foals in various projects, and immediately impressed me with her horse sense and handling skills as well as her ability to quickly grasp technical procedures. She also excels with benchtop skills, enthusiastically learning ELISAs, cell culture, neutrophil isolation, and free radical analytics assays. Meg works very well with or without direct supervision, and never fails to accomplish what is asked of her and more as a matter of routine. Her intelligence and academic prowess are apparent in her excellent academic record (a 4.0 last semester), but she also possesses a great deal of common sense and practicality, as well as innate people skills, unwavering eagerness to learn and expand her experiences, and an incredible work ethic. These are all skills that are critical to success and highly sought after in student workers, but are skills that are so difficult to teach. Finally, Meg is ALWAYS pleasant, respectful and polite and is very well-liked and respected by both her superiors and her peers.
Meg has worked longer hours and with more enthusiasm than just about all of my previous and current paid student helpers. She learns incredibly fast, and one never needs to explain something more than once to her. After every lab meeting, she immediately tackles all the tasks assigned to her and makes sure to help the rest of the team with theirs in the process. She is always volunteering to help everyone else and yet still manages to get all her work done in the lab, work at a local small animal hospital, ride on the varsity equestrian team, excel in her classes, and find time to ride competitively at another local horse farm! We joke in the lab that Meg is actually a super hero, but the more I know her the more I think it might be true!
Nominator: Dr. Kelsey Hart, Associate Professor, Large Animal Internal Medicine