[105] 3 MTSU June Grads Earn Prestigious ODK Scholarships

Release date: Sept. 21, 2010

News & Public Affairs contact: Randy Weiler, 615-898-5616 or jweiler@mtsu.edu
Honors College contact: Dr. John Vile, 615-898-2152 or jvile@mtsu.edu@mtsu.edu

3 MTSU June Grads Earn Prestigious ODK Scholarships
Gray, Holmes, Murphy Are Among 20 Nationally to Gain Honor

(MURFREESBORO) — Three MTSU June graduates are among 20 students nationally who received $1,000 Foundation Scholarships from the Omicron Delta Kappa Honor Society for graduate study.
Two of the students, Merranda Holmes of McMinnville and Shannon Murphy of Murfreesboro, are 2010 University Honors College biology graduates who are now attending medical school at East Tennessee State University in Johnson City.
The third recipient, Jasmine “Jaz” Gray, is a 2010 journalism honors graduate from Memphis. She is attending graduate school at Syracuse University in New York.
All three students were founding members of MTSU’s ODK Chapter, said Dr. John Vile, dean of the Honors College.
Holmes and Murphy served respectively as vice president and secretary of the MTSU Circle of ODK, which gained a charter from the national headquarters in May. The organization, founded at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va., in 1914, recognizes students who have excelled in scholarship and leadership.
Vile observes that it is especially heartening that ODK chose to give awards to students from a recently inaugurated chapter. He said that MTSU students are becoming increasingly competitive for national scholarships. A spokeswoman at the national ODK headquarters noted that it was highly unusual for a single university to have both three applicants and three winners for this prestigious award.
Gray wrote her honors thesis in journalism under the direction of Dr. Jennifer Woodard, assistant professor in electronic media communication. While a student at MTSU, Gray traveled to Ghana and to China, and was part of the McNair Scholars Program. She was named to USA Today’s Academic first team earlier, and was one of 20 students featured in the June 9 issue of the newspaper. Gray received MTSU’s Public Service Award in 2009 and the President’s Award in 2010 in part for her work in collecting pajamas for children in hospitals.
Gray received a two-year, $102,000 journalism fellowship from Syracuse and $2,500 for the USA Today honor.
Both Holmes and Murphy wrote honors theses under the guidance of biology Professor Stephen Wright, they made poster presentations in Nashville and Washington, D.C., and presented a paper before the annual meeting of the American Society for Microbiology in San Diego in June.
Holmes received a $5,000 scholarship from Phi Kappa Phi, another honor society on campus, and Murphy won the 2010 Provost’s Award and received prior honorable mentions from the Goldwater Scholarship Committee and the USA Today All-Academic Team.

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Media note: A high-resolution jpeg photo of May graduates Shannon Murphy, Merranda Holmes and Jasmine Gray is available. To obtain, please contact Randy Weiler in MTSU News and Public Affairs by calling 615-898-5616 or e-mail jweiler@mtsu.edu.

Founded in 1911, Middle Tennessee State University is a Tennessee Board of Regents institution located in Murfreesboro and is the state’s largest public undergraduate institution. MTSU now boasts one of the nation’s first master’s degree programs in horse science, and the Council of Graduate Schools in Washington, D.C., acclaims MTSU’s Master of Science in Professional Science degree — the only one in Tennessee — as a model program. This fall, MTSU unveiled three new doctoral degrees in the sciences.

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