Rose Fund awards four prizes

The Rose Fund awarded four monetary prizes -- up to $1500 each -- to undergraduates this week who submitted outstanding research projects. The faculty board which selects the winners based its decision on the quality, organization and overall impact of the completed projects, according to Terry Conn, executive assistant to the vice provost for University life. The students are free to spend the prize money as they wish, she added. This year's recipients are 1992 graduates Melissa Goldstein, Ileana Herman, Scott Mather and Elizabeth Reis. The research was not limited to any one field, but all applicants must have a faculty advisor's recommendation in order to be considered for the award, Conn added. If an applicant wins the award, the faculty advisor is also eligible for a monetary prize of up to $500. "The purpose of the award is to encourage independent research and give [researchers] support," Conn said. Goldstein, one of the four Rose Fund recipients, said she conducted her research on the relationship between medicine and literature. In her thesis, entitled William Carlos Williams: The Physician as Writer, she discussed the effects of author Williams' medical practice on his literary writing. "I fell in love with [Williams'] writing," Goldstein said yesterday. "It is very stark and realistic. He wrote many medical short stories, the kind that are now being used in some med schools to teach students about the relationship of society and medicine." Social Sciences Professor Renee Fox and English Professor Peter Conn nominated Goldstein for the Rose Fund award. "Not only did [Goldstein's] thesis meet the highest literary criteria, it also, in a deep and substantial way, explores Williams both as a doctor and an artist," Fox said. "I nominated [Goldstein] because she had the best undergraduate thesis I had ever seen." Goldstein said she became interested in the relationship between medicine and literature when she took Fox's bioethics course. "[After the course] I began doing research on my own and I was surprised at how many prominate writers were doctors," Goldstein said. "Keats, Flaubert, Sir Arther Conan Doyle were all doctors. I was especially interested in the authors who actually practiced medicine, while they were writers." Goldstein is currently a graduate student at the University and is co-teaching a freshman seminar with Fox on medicine in literature. She said she hopes to continue her research concerning the relationship of physicians as writers. "There were many things I enjoyed doing as an undergraduate," Goldstein said. "But writing this thesis was truly an amazing experience. I'm really glad I did it." 'There were many things I enjoyed doing as an undergraduate. But writing this thesis was truly an amazing experience. I'm really glad I did it.' Melissa Goldstein Rose Fund winner

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