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Nichole Beebe, B.S.

Student Researcher Nichole Beebe Honored

Congratulations to Nichole Beebe, B.S., who has received Kent State University’s David D. Smith Scholarship, awarded annually to a student who has shown exceptional scholarship and teaching. Nichole is currently working on a Ph.D. at KSU’s School of Biomedical Sciences Neuroscience Program and has had a close association with NEOMED.

Nichole grew up in Brookfield, Ohio, where she graduated from Brookfield High School. She is a graduate of the University of Mount Union, where she studied cognitive and behavioral neuroscience. Soon after completing her studies at Mount Union, she began her Ph.D. work.

Research on specific extracellular structures and their association with a region of the brain critical to hearing has been the focus of Nichole’s dissertation. This research has further established Nichole as a scientist through presentations at international research meetings.

Working as a teaching assistant at KSU’s Structure and Function Laboratory led Nichole to NEOMED, where she served as the teaching assistant for Dr. Brett Schofield’s Brain, Mind and Behavior course. Dr. Schofield says, “This is a difficult course to teach, because it requires each instructor to be authoritative on the entire brain in any given laboratory. Nichole received very positive reviews from both the medical and pharmacy students.”

Upon receiving a highly competitive Individual National Research Service Award (NRSA) from the National Institutes of Health, Nichole’s role as a teaching assistant ended. While she couldn’t continue on as a teaching assistant, Nichole agreed to serve as a tutor for the Brain, Mind and Behavior course.

“Within my lab, Nichole has played an essential role in several key areas over the past few years,” Dr. Schofield says. “Her success with the NRSA grant application revealed her strengths as a writer. Indeed, our whole lab has benefited from Nichole’s writing skills, as she has contributed to manuscripts and quite significantly to our recent renewal of NIH funding.’’

Nichole’s NRSA grant helped to bring the latest technology into the lab, furthering the team’s ongoing research. The research done in Dr. Schofield’s lab has allowed Nichole to publish five papers, two as the first author. Her latest paper will be published in the Journal of Neuroscience.