The Undergraduate Research Mentor of the Year award honors a faculty member who has shown outstanding commitment to mentoring undergraduate research students.
Jessica Budke
Jessica Budke is an assistant professor in the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department and director of the TENN Herbarium. Students working at the herbarium gain hands-on experience in natural history collections curation and management. In her research laboratory, students have carried out projects studying maternal-offspring interactions in moss plants and building molecular phylogenetic trees to understand species relationships.
What does being a Volunteer mean to you? How has UT empowered you to make a difference in a way you might not have imagined elsewhere?
I appreciate the university providing funding to support undergraduate research. Particularly the Faculty Research Assistants Funding from the Office of Undergrad Research and the Ecology & Evolutionary Biology Department. Being a Volunteer means valuing hands-on, experiential learning experiences for students, which help them to expand their skills and expertise.
Vermont Dia
Vermont Dia is an associate professor at the Department of Food Science in the UT Institute of Agriculture. He is mentoring both undergraduate and graduate students’ research. His research focuses on biological activities of food-derived peptides and phenolics, and he is involved teaching an introductory class in science of foods, food chemistry, food toxins, and food product development.
What does being a Volunteer mean to you? How has UT empowered you to make a difference in a way you might not have imagined elsewhere?
Being a Volunteer means serving the needs of all your constituents and giving the best of your ability when serving. UT has empowered my undergraduate research mentoring by continuously supporting undergraduate researchers and their mentors which may not be present in other institutions.