Choose Ohio First Scholarship program

We recently hosted a site visit by representatives from the State of Ohio's Choose Ohio First (COF) Scholarship program.  The program's director, Briana Hervet, and Jeff Handley spent a morning on our campus talking with our scholarship students, faculty, administrators and taking a tour of our facilities.

The science programs at Ashland have been able to provide additional scholarship dollars to select students in biochemistry, biology, environmental science and toxicology majors as part of a 5-year grant from the State of Ohio to increase the numbers of well-trained scientists going into biomedical, environmental science and agricultural fields.  We graduated our first four COF students this past year.  One of them was the University's valedictorian and is now pursuing a PhD at UNC-Chapel Hill, another was the University salutatorian and is currently applying to MD and DO programs, and a third is working in analytical drug development at Roxanne Laboratories in Columbus, Ohio.  Two of our four COF graduates completed their bachelors degrees in less than four years.  We currently have 20 students in the program and will soon apply for another five years of scholarship support.

The image below shows our visitors in front of a research poster presented recently by one of our COF graduates, Carly Young, who is currently applying to PA programs.  Her research project on viruses that infect bacteria was mentored by Dr. Paul Hyman, a microbiologist in the Department of Biology/Toxicology.  You can read more about our COF program here.

Jeff Handley and Briana Hervet from the State's Choose Ohio First program visiting the Ashland University Science Building