The Graduate School has selected four doctoral candidates and one postdoctoral researcher to be inducted into UW–Madison’s chapter of the Edward Alexander Bouchet Graduate Honor Society in 2022:
- Kennia Coronado – Doctoral candidate, Political Science
- Kendra Greendeer – Doctoral candidate, Art History
- Linda Park – Postdoctoral Research Associate, Family Medicine and Community Health
- Bo Peng – Doctoral candidate, Cellular and Molecular Biology; MD/PhD Medical Scientist Training Program
- Whitney Stevens-Sostre – Doctoral candidate, Neuroscience Training Program
The Bouchet Society provides scholars with a network of peers who exemplify character, leadership, scholarship, service, and advocacy for those who have been traditionally underrepresented in the academy. Induction into the Bouchet Society is both an individual honor and a welcome into this wider network of like-minded scholars.
The 2022 cohort of UW–Madison Bouchet scholars will be honored at an induction ceremony Tuesday, March 29. Read more about this group of outstanding inductees, below.
Kennia Coronado
Kennia Coronado is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Her research interests lie broadly at the intersections of race and ethnicity, political behavior, and political communication. In her dissertation, she investigates the processes and mechanisms under which Latinxs are mobilized to participate in U.S. elections—even when many are ineligible to vote. Coronado’s research interests are motivated by observations she made as a former immigrant rights organizer and as a former Spanish-language radio host. In addition to research, she mentors underrepresented students in on-campus research programs intended to help students obtain experience and guide those interested in graduate programs. Coronado was first introduced to the idea of pursuing a PhD in political science through the Ralph Bunche summer program at Duke University. While an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, she was also selected as a McNair scholar. These experiences cemented her commitment to mentor underrepresented students and create more welcoming college environments. Kennia is committed to equity on campus and off campus. She actively participates in ways to better support underrepresented students in her department and the classroom. Coronado received a campus-wide Early Excellence in Teaching Award for her teaching in the “Politics of Multi-cultural Societies” course in the Spring of 2020. She is an active member of her community and sits on boards and committees that advocate for the equity of BIPOC communities across diverse issues.
Kendra Greendeer
Kendra Greendeer is a PhD Candidate in Art History at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and working on her dissertation “Rematriating Indigeneity in Contemporary Native American Arts” which looks closely at the impact of contemporary Indigenous American women artists and place-making practices in their art. Greendeer’s research is informed by her Indigenous ancestry, Ho-Chunk and Red Cliff Band Ojibwe, and considers the role of Indigenous women makers and their art practice as decolonial acts in the reengagement of Indigenous people to land in the United States and Canada. Her research is focused on three contemporary Native women artists that live and work in the United States and Canada.
Her publications include “The Land Remembers Native Histories” which analyzes the markers and monuments of the University of Wisconsin–Madison campus, and “Ho-Chunk Bandelier Bag” which is an essay focused on a Ho-Chunk-made beaded bandelier bag from the Fenimore Art Museum.
Linda Park
Linda Park is a Postdoctoral Research Associate with the Implementation Science and Engineering Lab in the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health (DFMCH) at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. Linda received her PhD (UW–Madison) in the School of Human Ecology, Human Development and Family Studies with two minors—Research Methods in Cultural Studies and Social Welfare. She has two Master of Science degrees—Social Work and Business (UW–Madison). She received her BA in Psychology with a minor in Sociology from The College of William and Mary. She is a National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD) Scholar and a NIMHD Health Disparities Research Institute participant. Linda conducts interdisciplinary research with her mentor, Dr. Andrew Quanbeck (PhD Engineering/DFMCH faculty) on projects implementing mobile health technologies into healthcare settings. As a postdoc and project manager, Linda focuses on ensuring a mobile health app focusing on alcohol and wellness could be a useful tool for those in the BIPOC community as well as the majority White population in Wisconsin. But Linda’s passion for health equity drives her own research focusing on health disparities and cultural determinants of health for immigrant and refugee families. She recently completed a pilot study exploring challenges for older Hmong patients with limited English proficiency and Type 2 Diabetes, while identifying their caregivers’ support needs. Linda is currently working on a grant to adapt an evidence-based mobile health app to educate Hmong caregivers about diabetes so they can better support the older Hmong patient.
Bo Peng
Bo Peng is a current sixth year MD/PhD student at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and ultimately aims to become an academic physician-scientist in the field of neurosurgery and a principal investigator in translational neuroscience research. She has extensive molecular biology research experience beginning as an undergraduate researcher at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), where she spent three consecutive summers identifying a novel conserved protein epitope on the surface of Plasmodium falciparum-infected erythrocytes. Her work was presented at multiple conferences. Concurrently at the Department of Neuroscience at Duke University, she built a mechanistic foundation in neuronal development and differentiation using Drosophila as a model organism. Her work there resulted in a co-authored publication and a senior thesis where she received High Honors in the Department of Biology. As a post-baccalaureate fellow at the NIH, she spearheaded a project investigating the molecular pathway of multidrug-resistant malaria. She presented her findings at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) virology seminar. These formative experiences solidified her desire to pursue a MD/PhD degree where she is using her clinical training to guide research, and vice versa. As a third-year graduate student in Dr. Darcie Moore’s laboratory, her thesis project focuses on understanding novel post-transcriptional regulation mechanisms during mammalian neural stem cell (NSC) quiescence exit, a key step in replenishing neurons in aging and neurological diseases. Her work has resulted in a published co-authored article, and two first author publications in preparation. She has also presented her work at internal seminars and national conferences as talks, invited talks, and posters.
Whitney Stevens-Sostre
Whitney A. Stevens-Sostre is a PhD Candidate in the Neuroscience Training Program at the University of Wisconsin–Madison working in the laboratory of Dr. Gail Robertson. Whitney earned her BS in Biology from the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez, where she participated in the National Institutes for Health (NIH)-funded Research Initiative for Scientific Enhancement (RISE-2-BEST) and Maximizing Access to Research Careers (MARC) training programs. After graduating, she worked as a research technician at the University of Chicago through the NIH-funded Post-Baccalaureate Research Education Program (PREP), where she developed her passion for ion channel research. Whitney’s dissertation work aims to elucidate the molecular mechanisms by which the intracellular domains of KCNH voltage-gated potassium channels modulate gating to control excitability in neurons and cardiomyocytes. Her dissertation research has led to two publications thus far. Whitney is a Science and Medicine Graduate Research Scholars (SciMed GRS) Fellow and a Yale Ciencia Academy Fellow. As a graduate student, she earned slots on two institutional T32 grants. In addition, Whitney founded Black In Biophysics and co-organized #BlackInBiophysicsWeek, an international social media initiative that highlighted and celebrated Black scholars in biophysics and related fields. She recently received the prestigious NIH Blueprint Diversity Specialized Predoctoral to Postdoctoral Advancement in Neuroscience (D-SPAN) Award (F99/K00). Her professional goal is to become a tenured professor at a major research institution who studies channelopathies primarily affecting the nervous system, while also being a mentor and active advocate for underrepresented minorities in STEM fields.
Learn more about the Bouchet Graduate Honor Society.