Azaree Lintereur of Tomahawk, a physics major at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, has become the seventh UWSP student to win the prestigious, federally-funded Goldwater Scholarship.

The scholarship is awarded to undergraduate students with exceptional potential for a career in science, and carries a yearly stipend of $7500. The application requires an extensive research proposal. Students must be nominated by their university to apply, and it is open to any American institution, so the competition is extremely keen. There were 320 winners nationwide from 1,091 applicants, which included majors in mathematics, natural science, engineering and computer science from the most prestigious schools in the U.S. UW-Madison was the only other Wisconsin university with Goldwater winners.

The daughter of Heidi Jarvis and Michael Lintereur of Tomahawk, Lintereur grew up in Gleason, with only a radio and telephone to connect with the outside world - no television, no computer. She and her four siblings were homeschooled by her mother.

"I know that there was more than one occasion [when] I made them question the wisdom of their decision," she says. When Azaree was 16, she was sent to high school in Tomahawk to take physics. "[My mother] hated physics so much that she did not feel that she would be an effective teacher on this subject."

Azaree fell in love with physics, and decided to go to college. She took the HSED high school equivalency exam at Nicolet Technical College and scored highest of all applicants there.

After entering UWSP, she tried many other subjects, but came back to physics. Two years ago, she joined the research lab of Professor Robert Beeken and began an undergraduate research project on creating and testing new materials, argyrodites, for storage batteries. She described that work in her Goldwater application.

Lintereur, who holds a 3.98 overall grade point average, will graduate from UWSP in May 2006. She hopes to get a Ph.D. in medical physics and to work on new advances in radiology for the treatment of cancer patients.

Information on this year's Goldwater Scholarship winners can be found at: www.act.org/goldwater/sch-2005.html.

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