Three Bucknell seniors win prestigious NSF graduate fellowships

Three Bucknell seniors in Lewisburg won one of the nation’s most selective graduate honors this week, putting the Union County campus in a small class of colleges with multiple National Science Foundation fellowship recipients in a single cycle.

Evelyn Hergenhan, Cole Kratz and Lucy Park, all members of Bucknell’s Class of 2026, received National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships. Three other Bucknell seniors, Madeleine Whitsitt, Kristie Semanchik and Victoria Abramczuk, earned honorable mentions in the same competition, a sign that the university’s research bench runs deeper than the headline award.

The scale of the competition shows why the result matters. The National Science Foundation said it will award 2,500 fellowships for the 2026-27 academic year from a pool of nearly 14,000 applicants nationwide. It also named 1,470 honorable mentions. Established in 1952, the Graduate Research Fellowship Program is designed to strengthen the U.S. scientific and engineering workforce by backing students who show research ability, intellectual curiosity and a commitment to public service.

For recipients, the fellowship carries both prestige and practical value. It provides three years of support over a five-year period, including a $37,000 annual stipend and a $16,000 cost-of-education allowance paid to the graduate institution for tuition and mandatory fees. For a university like Bucknell, which has long emphasized undergraduate research as part of its identity, each award also serves as an external measure of how well students are being prepared for graduate study.

Bucknell tied the success to its Program for Undergraduate Research, a university-wide summer program that funds student research, scholarship and creative projects with faculty mentors. The university now lists Starlette Sharp as program director for undergraduate fellowships and research, underscoring the institutional support behind the application process. Bucknell said the fellowship review rewards more than strong grades: students must show persistence, a drive to improve the human condition and the ability to connect research with service and long-term goals.

Hergenhan’s path captures that blend. Now pursuing a doctorate in biomedical engineering at the University of Virginia, she studied therapeutic ultrasound related to healing chronic wounds. Her Bucknell honors thesis, The Effects of Low-Frequency, Low-Intensity Ultrasound on Gene Expression in Macrophage-Endothelial Cell Co-Culture, connected directly to work in Bucknell’s ultrasound and mechanobiology lab, which says low-frequency, low-intensity therapeutic ultrasound has been shown to clinically advance chronic-wound healing. Hergenhan said her research and a personal experience with wound complications helped shape her career path, and she has continued a letter-writing project for patients in a local nursing and rehabilitation center.

The latest results extend a pattern Bucknell has highlighted before. The university said six Bucknellians earned NSF fellowship or Goldwater recognition in 2024, and seven Bucknellians received NSF Graduate Research Fellowship grants in 2021. Founded in 1846 as the University at Lewisburg and renamed in 1886, Bucknell has used those outcomes to reinforce a message that undergraduate research in central Pennsylvania can lead to national competition, graduate training and, eventually, careers with broader scientific and social impact.