Karen Medville
Assistant research scientist, Arizona State University West

When Karen Medville was a teenager, she says she was a "wild kid." She ran a bar and got pregnant at a young age. With a young child to support, Medville considered her options and decided to go to college. At Pikes Peak Community College, she tested at the 6th grade level. Medville began taking remedial courses and planned to earn a nursing degree and support her daughter. Along the way, she discovered that she really enjoyed science. Instead of stopping her studies after earning an Associate's degree, she went on to Colorado College. The experience was difficult and challenging for Medville, who felt different and stupid compared to the other students. She got poor grades, was one of four single parents, a Cherokee Indian and a woman.

Despite the challenges she faced, Medville succeeded at Colorado and went on to graduate school, first for a Master's degree in physiology and biophysics from Colorado State University and then for a Ph.D. in environmental toxicology from Cornell University. Today, she is an assistant research scientist at Arizona State University West.

Medville spends each summer teaching environmental science to teenage students in the Mohawk community in upstate New York, partly because she feels that science is an important subject to master and partly because she understands the importance of having someone to look up to. At their age, she recalls, she did not have a role model. She speaks to Native American organizations around the country and is involved with several organizations that promote science education for young people.

Photo courtesy of Blackside, Inc.
Biography by Lauren Foley