April 21, 1998
KALAMAZOO -- Bryan G. Sauer, a Western Michigan University senior from Oconomowoc, Wis., has capped an outstanding undergraduate career by winning a $7,000 fellowship for graduate studies from one of the nation's top collegiate honor societies.
Sauer, who will graduate April 25 with a bachelor of science degree in biomedical sciences, won a Phi Kappa Phi National Graduate Fellowship Award. The award, the first ever received by a member of WMU's Phi Kappa Phi chapter, will support Sauer's medical studies this fall at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Sauer also is the recipient of a $500 fellowship from the WMU chapter of Phi Kappa Phi.
Sauer was selected as a junior for membership in Phi Kappa Phi, an honor awarded to only the top 5 percent of the junior class. Phi Kappa Phi, established in 1897, is the oldest and largest national honor society that recognizes and promotes superior scholarship in all academic disciplines in higher education.
"Bryan is an incredibly talented young man," says Dr. Joseph G. Reish, dean of WMU's Lee Honors College. "Only 50 of these fellowships are awarded nationally and this is the first time in WMU's 10-year chapter history that we've had a national winner."
A member of the Lee Honors College, Sauer pursued his studies at WMU as a 1994 winner of a prestigious $25,000 Medallion Scholarship. Earlier this month, he became a member of WMU's first class of inductees into the University's newly chartered chapter of Phi Beta Kappa honor society. He will graduate with highest honors.
Working for two years with Dr. Susan R. Stapleton, associate professor of chemistry, Sauer focused his undergraduate research and honors thesis on an examination of the effects of zinc on an enzyme that is important in carbohydrate metabolism. To support that work, he won two semester-long Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities Awards -- one from the College of Arts and Sciences and another awarded in a University-wide competition administered through the Lee Honors College.
Sauer also served as a resident adviser for two years to students living in Eldridge-Fox residence halls, the honors residential complex, and during his senior year he served as an assistant hall director. He was involved as a volunteer for a Christian organization for high school students and was active in the WMU student chapter of the Medical Sciences Association. Before starting medical school this fall, he will spend the summer in India working with an oncologist in a hospital located near Bombay.
Media contact: Cheryl Roland; cheryl.roland@wmich.edu
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