Sara DiNardo Selected as 2008 Cooperative Education Student of the Year
Sara DiNardo of McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania has been selected as the recipient of the 2008 Co-op Student of the Year Award, which is sponsored by the Eberly College of Science Cooperative Education Program. The award recognizes the student's academic achievements and contributions to the participating employer, the University, the community, and the field of cooperative education.
Sara was nominated by Laura Storck of GlaxoSmithKline. Sara was a co-op student at GlaxoSmithKline during the summer and fall 2007 semesters, when her main research focus was to assist in a project to test a new technique for counting cells that one day may help in the development of certain drugs. She very quickly took on a major role in the group, and was named second author on a poster presented at the Great Lakes International Imaging Flow Cytometry Association scientific meeting in September 2007. The group also received the GlaxoSmithKline Exceptional Science Award, due in part to Sara's direct and valuable contributions. Ms. Storck describes Sara as being among the very top on the list of all of the students she has mentored.
Sara decided to explore a drastically different side of medicine for her next co-op experience. She completed her third co-op semester during the summer of 2008 at a small health clinic in Guayaquil, Ecuador, where she performed numerous laboratory tests. She reports that she greatly enjoyed the busy atmosphere and the patient contact, and that she would like to continue to provide assistance to the clinic in the future.
Sara will graduate in December 2008 with a Penn State B.S. degree in science and also a Spanish minor. She plans to attend dental school in the fall of 2009. She will receive a $500 award and certificate of achievement, and will be nominated for state and national Co-op Student of the Year awards.
Information about the Penn State Eberly College of Science Cooperative Education Program is on the web at http://www.science.psu.edu/career.
CONTACTS
Barbara Kennedy (PIO): 814-863-4682, science@psu.edu