Michael D. Wilson Research Fellows and Scholars

The Michael D. Wilson Scholars and Fellows represent some of UMF’s best students from across all disciplines. The program recognizes UMF students’ tremendous creativity and expands UMF’s commitment to undergraduate research and faculty mentoring. Each student is awarded funding to help underwrite an original undergraduate research or creative project. The Program has been providing single-semester support for research, scholarship, and creative projects at UMF since the fall of 2006. It was expanded in the fall of 2007 to include full-year Wilson Research Fellow awards to support even more substantive research projects. In the years since its inception, the Wilson program has supported the investigative research and creative activities of more than 250 students at UMF. During this time UMF faculty members have developed strong mentoring relationships with individual scholars, providing guidance with proposal development, research methodology, and continuing pre-professional and post-graduate opportunities. The awards honor UMF alumnus, Michael D. Wilson, class of 1976, an avid environmentalist, aspiring teacher, and dear friend whose untimely death in 1977 deeply saddened the UMF community. The students are nominated by a UMF faculty mentor and, after a competitive selection process, are chosen by the UMF Undergraduate Research Council.

2023-24 Wilson Fellow

Sadie Gray – Zooplankton sensitivity to climate-driven conditions in high-elevation lakes (Faculty Advisor: Rachel Hovel)

Fall 2023 Wilson Scholars

Katherine Berube – Rise of the Wolf Queen: An Academic and Creative Exploration of the Monstrous Feminine in Contemporary Speculative Fiction (Faculty Advisor: Noelle Dubay)

Riley Boucher – Using eDNA to assess the distribution of the smallmouth bass (Micropterus dolomieu), an invasive species, in Maine (Faculty Advisor: Donelle Schwalm)

Shaina Fusco – Adventures in Signification: An Exploration of Graphic Musical Notation (Faculty Advisor: Aaron Wyanski)

Gillean Hamilton – Continuation of Stream Geochemical Analysis near the Plumbago North Lithium Deposit, West-central Maine (Faculty Advisor: Doug Reusch)

Juila Holcomb – Burning Sage: a collection of lullabies (Faculty Advisor: Aaron Wyanski)

Rain Smith – Persephone and Hades Through a Modern Lens (Faculty Advisor: Noelle Dubay)

Seán Tenney – Art, Artist and Audience: An Interdisciplinary Investigation (Faculty Advisors: Steve Quackenbush and Dawn Nye)

Spring 2024 Wilson Scholars

Alden Hallett – The Great Count Out: Maine’s Stolen Election During the Gilded Age (Faculty Advisor: Michael Schoeppner)

Aidan Mulrooney – Where does Entente Come From? The Ambiguities of the Entente Cordiale and the Outbreak of the First World War (Faculty Advisor: Michael Schoeppner)

Grayson Havens – Beyond the Binary: A Gender Memoir (Faculty Advisor: Misty Krueger)

Grayson Koelbl – Dough Boy: Being Trans in the Arts (Faculty Advisor: Melissa Thompson)

Kelly Gentilo – Lucid Dream: A Multimedia Installation (Faculty Advisor: Melissa Thompson)

Manu Ritchie – Adaptation: The Fanfiction of Academia? (Faculty Advisor: Michael Johnson)

Natalka Harris – A Circumnavigation (Faculty Advisor: Noelle Dubay)

Shaylynn Koban – Cross-Cultural Perceptions of Text Message Senders due to Emoji Usage (Faculty Advisor: Karol Maybury)