For the third time in four years, a Nebraska Wesleyan University student has been awarded one of the nation¹s highest academic honors.
The Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation has named Catherine ³CJ² Koozer one of 60 recipients of the prestigious Truman Scholarship. Koozer, a junior biology major from Hastings, was selected from a pool of 600 national candidates. She is the only Nebraska student to receive the honor.
Scholars are selected based on leadership potential, intellectual ability, and the likelihood of making a difference. The scholarship provides $30,000 toward graduate studies. Scholars receive priority admission and supplemental financial aid at premier graduate institutions, leadership training and special internship opportunities within the federal government.
"Catherine Koozer ‹ known to everyone on the Nebraska Wesleyan campus as CJ ‹ has taken great advantage of the academic challenges and individual attention that we prize here,² said Nebraska Wesleyan University President Fred Ohles. ³I'm delighted she has won the Truman Fellowship and I know she will excel with the opportunities it offers her."
The Truman Foundation honored Koozer for her passion for improving public health. For example:
· Koozer spearheaded a student organization¹s recent Doc to Dock
project. She helped collect unused medical supplies in several Nebraska communities and distributed them to a Denver warehouse that sent the supplies to clinics and hospitals in Africa. The project was the first of its kind by a Nebraska college.
· Koozer participated in a service trip to Nicaragua where she helped
with a mobile health clinic. The experience outraged her after seeing the inadequate level of prenatal care that the Nicaraguan women received. The experience further fueled her passion to fight for global health care.
Koozer is considering graduate school at Johns Hopkins University or the University of Alabama-Birmingham where she would like to study women¹s and children¹s health in a MD/MPH dual program. She hopes to practice medicine in Sub-Saharan countries lacking maternal health programs and eventually work on global health policies with organizations like the World Health Organization.
³Living far away from the issues I am concerned with has not limited my passion to be a part of them,² said Koozer. ³I envision a world where health is global; a vaccine does not only go to wealthy countries, doctors are not tied to their nations, and all humans can live without fearing for their health.²
While at Nebraska Wesleyan, Koozer has been active in Global Service Learning, Student Affairs Senate, Pre-Health Club, Women¹s Resource Center, and Relay for Life. She has also worked with the Nebraska AIDS Project as an HIV tester, Friendship Home, People¹s City Mission and the Boys and Girls Town Research Hospital.
Koozer is the daughter of Robin and Ann Koozer of Hastings.
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