Students at UND come from literally all over the world. But when UND Discovery asked Graduate School Dean Joseph Benoit to name some outstanding examples from his more than 300 Ph.D. candidates, he chose four who turned out to have grown up within a day’s driving distance of the Grand Forks campus.

“These students, and the majority of their counterparts at UND, could have gone to any graduate school in the country,” he said.

The four also have something else in common that illustrates how students choose a graduate school: they say they were strongly influenced by the opportunity to study with faculty who are recognized scholars in their fields. And, in fact, all are involved today in pursuing important aspects of the ongoing work of UND professors who both teach and develop new knowledge.

Kristine Carlson is a member of a team that uses cutting-edge computer modeling techniques to evaluate the behavior of molecules such as proteins and peptides. (Photo: Chuck Kimmerle/University Relations)

Kristine Carlson: Chemistry
Kristine Carlson made headlines this spring when she was selected as one of a handful of American students invited to participate in the annual gathering of Nobel Prize laureates in Lindau, Germany. Her father, Jeff Carlson, vice president of Minn-Dak Farmers Cooperative in Wahpeton, N.D., himself a chemist with a Ph.D. from UND, pointed her toward his alma mater.

An authentic whiz kid who started college in Fergus Falls, Minn., at the age of 14, she completed her chemistry degree in 1997 at Minnesota State University Moorhead. She had planned to enter medical school and eventually specialize in the practice of pediatric oncology. Over the course of her education, she discovered a passion for understanding the basic chemical mechanisms that allow the development of this dread disease. Although her eye was always on graduate school, she spent a few years obtaining experience as a chemist and substitute teacher. In 2001, she began to look for a graduate program with strength in theoretical chemistry. It was then that her father suggested UND, and she met the Chemistry Department faculty members who today are her advisors, Professor Kathryn Thomasson and Professor and Department Chair Mark Hoffmann.

As a member of both their research teams, Carlson’s research combines both classical and quantum physics to describe and predict the behavior of molecular systems. Carlson’s part of the larger effort is aimed at predicting the interaction of systems of amino acids with light. It is cutting-edge work, Thomasson says, involving highly advanced computer modeling to complement the traditional test tubes and beakers long associated with research in chemistry. Baker’s work will contribute to an important advancement in science, she predicts, as well as lead to her Ph.D., that essential credential for admission into the international community of scientific research.

Allison Baker is seeking to better understand the complex interaction between the belief structures and behaviors of reservation-dwelling American Indians in their growth from childhood to adult life. (Photo: Chuck Kimmerle/University Relations)

Allison Baker: Counseling Psychology
In an era when universities are broadening opportunities for American Indians and other underserved populations, Allison Baker’s impeccable academic record as a high school student at Mandaree, N.D., and as a UND undergraduate made her a prospect to study at any institution in the country. She is a member of an education-minded family: her father has a Ph.D. from Penn State, her mother is a teacher, and her four siblings are all college students. She seriously considered Colorado State, but UND won out because of her early interest in pursuing a medical career.

As she got to know UND, however, Baker — a McNair Scholar — was drawn to its nationally known program in counseling psychology. Today, in the second year of what will likely be a four- to six-year road to her Ph.D., she is a graduate assistant in that department.

The challenge now is to decide upon a dissertation topic in collaboration with her advisor and mentor. That individual is Assistant Professor Kara Wettersten, whose research expertise and agenda include solution-focused therapy and the assessment of counseling theory and strategies in actual practice. Baker says she wants to be involved in better understanding the complex interaction between the belief structures and behaviors of reservation-dwelling American Indians as they make the transition from child to adult. Eventually she plans to work in a prison environment and develop a counseling practice.

Mark Cervinski (standing) and Jon Gaffaney are completing doctoral dissertations based on their research work on a protein called the dopamine transporter (DAT), which controls the level of the neurotransmitter dopamine in the brain. They are conducting this work under the direction of Dr. Roxanne Vaughan, associate professor of biochemistry and molecular biology. They have presented their work at several scientific conferences. (Photo: Chuck Kimmerle/University Relations)

Jon Gaffaney and Mark Cervinski: Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Anyone touring UND’s School of Medicine and Health Sciences will soon learn of Jon Gaffaney and Mark Cervinski. On the walls of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology are posters the two have presented about their research at national scientific conferences. They share something else as well: both are recipients of pre-doctoral fellowships from the National Institutes of Health. That’s a very rare distinction indeed, says Associate Professor Roxanne Vaughan.

Gaffaney and Cervinski spend much of their time in Vaughan’s lab, completing dissertations related to her studies into a protein called the dopamine transporter (DAT), which controls the level of the neurotransmitter dopamine in the brain. That activity is essential for normal brain physiology. Many disorders, such as Parkinson’s disease, depression and drug abuse, are associated with abnormal DAT.

Gaffaney is studying how the three-dimensional shape of DAT is affected by cocaine and other abused drugs, and Cervinski is determining how DAT’s functional regulation is altered by methamphetamine and other drugs. Their findings may help lead to new treatments for addiction.

Gaffaney, from Alexandria, Minn., did his undergraduate work in chemistry at Bemidji State University, in part, he says, because he is a “Minnesota” type who loves the region. Although he applied to a number of graduate schools and had never been in Grand Forks before, he was struck by the genuine personalities and sense of community he found in the UND Medical School. That, in addition to the opportunity to work with Dr. Vaughan, brought and kept him here.

He’ll finish his degree in December but will remain in Grand Forks to enable his wife to complete her contract in the local schools. He’ll be looking for postdoctoral study opportunities, and will have to decide whether to further pursue the niche he has established in his doctoral work or move on to another research topic. Either way, he says he wants to find a place where he can study and “be happy at the same time.” And, he adds, it isn’t the place that’s so important, it’s the investigators with whom he’ll work.

Cervinski, from Bonnyville, Alberta, is the son of school teachers who relocated from North Dakota to Canada. He did his undergraduate work at the University of Mary in Bismarck and was initially interested in physical therapy. But then something happened that is not uncommon, observed Graduate Dean Joseph Benoit: he met someone who was aware of the possibilities UND could offer a talented young person and referred him to the relevant department. That person was Margaret Nordlie, associate professor of mathematics and natural sciences at Mary and the daughter of one of UND’s most celebrated researchers, Chester Fritz Distinguished Professor Emeritus Robert Nordlie.

Cervinski took her advice and enrolled in a master’s program in biochemistry and molecular biology, but after a year switched to the Ph.D. track and began to play a larger role in Dr. Vaughan’s lab. With her encouragement, he applied for the National Institutes of Health fellowship and, like Gaffaney, was awarded one of the three-year stipends which also includes support for lab supplies and travel.

Just married this spring, Cervinski looks forward to the work ahead on the cutting edge of a field with profound implications for medicine and the society at large.

Dr. Vaughan, too, looks forward to her continued collaboration with these two graduate students: “Their dedication and enthusiasm has been a positive influence for other members of the lab, and it has been a genuine pleasure for me to mentor them through their studies and watch their development as scientists.”