BY ALEXANDER ROLLE and ASHIA TROIANO

In print | Published April 9, 2009

Two Swarthmore juniors, Benjamin Good and Markus Kliegl, were recently named Goldwater scholars for the 2009-10 academic year, and another junior, Julia Berthet, received Honorable Mention. Named after Senator Barry Goldwater, the scholarship provides rising-juniors and rising-seniors with up to $7,500 towards their annual school-related expenses. The scholarship is geared toward students who have demonstrated commitment to and are pursuing studies in natural sciences, mathematics and engineering.

Colleges and universities can nominate a maximum of four students for the award. This year, 278 undergraduates across the country were selected for the award, out of an applicant pool of more than 1,000 students who were nominated by their faculties. After an internal review process, Swarthmore nominated four students. “There’s no cap [to how many people can apply for nomination], but usually we get in the neighborhood of eight to ten,” said Melissa Mandos, Fellowships and Prizes Advisor. “We’d like to encourage people interested in the sciences to take a good look at the scholarship.”

Good thought that, overall, it was not the application process that involved a lot of work though.

“It’s surprisingly easy in terms of the amount of work you have to do compared to a lot of the other big scholarships. Really you just have to fill out an application and you write an essay about your summer research and you have to go through an interview to get nominated, but other than that it’s pretty straightforward,” Good said. “The real work comes both in the couple years here in courses and doing research.”

Most students who apply for the Goldwater have already done some sort of research in their respective fields. Even though it does not necessarily need to be research the student plans on pursuing in the future, Kliegl said “it’s important to be able to talk about what research you did in a sensical way.” Both Good and Kliegl have done in-depth research so far at Swarthmore.

“I worked on a subject called quantum walks, which is a quantum mechanical analog of classical random walks that draws on topics like graph theory, convergence theory,” Kliegl said. “People have become interested in it because of its applications in quantum computers.”

“I was doing my research in mathematical network theory and by network I mean — it could be really a network of anything, a network of friendships,” Good said. “Specifically I was working on codifying group structure of really large networks.”

As Goldwater scholars, Kliegl and Good are now preparing for careers in the sciences. “After Swarthmore I plan to go to graduate school, right now I’m trying to decide between going to graduate school in physics or going to graduate school in applied math,” Good said. “There’s also this area called complex systems science – it’s a relatively new discipline … it hasn’t really been entrenched in a lot of big research universities yet so we’ll see about graduate school.”

Kliegl plans on getting a Ph.D. in mathematics.

In the past couple of years, there has been at least one Swarthmore student that has received recognition from the Goldwater. “We’ve had great fortune with the Goldwater. We have a really good track record with it,” Mandos said. “Professors are really encouraging students to apply.”

Kliegl is an honors math major, an honors physics minor, and a course physics minor. Good is an honors physics major, course math major, and an honors math minor.

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