Austin Weigle recognized by Goldwater Scholarship
04/05/2016 | 12:00:00 | Track and Field
By: Will Becque
SIUSalukis.com
CARBONDALE, Ill. - Southern Illinois University high jumper Austin Weigle, a junior majoring in Plant Biology, has been awarded Honorable Mention by the Barry Goldwater Scholarship Foundation.
Weigle, a Kennebunk, Maine native, is the first Saluki student-athlete to earn such honors in the 30-year history of the award. Austin's research, under the guidance of Dr. Aldwin Anterola, focuses on drug discovery and synergy of phytochemical natural products, complementary with University teaching.
"I'm interested in isolating chemicals in plants to develop natural drugs," said Weigle. "I've always been interested in the properties that food and plants have. When you think about it, plants do so much. They're the plastic in your water bottle, they're the latex in your gloves, they're the toothpaste that you use. They can make up your clothing, your food and your medicine. And I really like the medicinal component."
Weigle carries a 3.846 grade point average and last season, was one of 69 student-athletes in the Missouri Valley Conference to earn the Commissioner's Academic Excellence Award, the league's highest academic achievement. He competed in six indoor meets and four outdoor meets a year ago, scoring valuable team points with an eight-place finish in the high jump at the MVC Outdoor Championships, contributing to the SIU men's first MVC outdoor title since 1992.
"I'm not a superb athlete," remarked Weigle. "But the fact that I can help score and contribute to the team, at the end when you have your own personal battles, on and off the track, it puts it all together and you say, 'hey this is worth it.'"
Weigle has seemingly always had a knack for balancing academics and athletics, as he was a three-sport athlete at Kennebunk High School, competing in cross country, wrestling, indoor track and outdoor track. On top of his athletic pursuits, Austin took 12 AP credit hours a semester, served as the school's mascot, acted in theater productions and was a member of student government. Austin's approach to balancing his many pursuits is simple- prioritize and give everything the time it requires.
"People say academics first, but I say no, athletics first," said Weigle. "Because you only have so much daylight. You have to give everything the time it requires, even if you're tired. I don't stay up past 11 or 12 p.m., but I manage to give everything the right amount of effort."
Kennebunk, Maine is located on the southwesterly coast of Maine, some 90 miles north of Boston and 25 miles south of Portland. Traveling by car, it would take 20-plus hours covering 1,294 miles to make it to Carbondale from Kennebunk. When asked how he came to chose Southern Illinois University, Weigle says being able to do the type of research that he is currently doing was paramount, but recalls how welcoming SIU's faculty and staff were on his lone visit to Southern.
"When I came here for a weekend visit, the speaker opened it by saying 'all your hard work has paid off.' I applied to 15 schools and not a single other school said 'you've done well.' They all said, 'you didn't do this.' I felt really welcome here."
While Weigle's Honorable Mention status does not bring with it the monetary award that the scholarship offers, it does carry with it the prestige and the clout that the Goldwater Scholarship brings. In fact, Goldwater Scholars have an impressive history of going on to even greater post-undergraduate fellowship programs. Recent Goldwater Scholars have been awarded 86 Rhodes Scholarships, 125 Marshall Awards, 134 Churchill Scholarships, and numerous other distinguished fellowships such as the National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowships.
"The clout is the biggest thing," said Weigle. "I was talking with my application mentor, and she said there's a girl who got the Goldwater (Scholarship) a few years ago and she applied to Cornell University and Cal Tech. Cornell initially denied her. She won the Goldwater and Cornell called her back and said 'you're in.' That's the power that the Goldwater Scholarship has."
The Goldwater Foundation is a federally endowed agency established by Public Law 99-661 on November 14, 1986. The Scholarship Program honoring Senator Barry Goldwater was designed to foster and encourage outstanding students to pursue careers in the fields of mathematics, the natural sciences, and engineering. The Goldwater Scholarship is the premier undergraduate award of its type in these fields.
Since its first award in 1989, the Foundation has bestowed 7,163 scholarships worth approximately 46 million dollars. The Trustees plan to award about three hundred scholarships for the 2015--2016 academic year.
Weigle will no doubt have plenty of options after he graduates from SIU in 2017, but says he would like to pursue an Interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Pharmacognosy and Plant Molecular Biology.
"I'd like to go directly for a Ph.D in medicinal chemistry," said Weigle. "That way I can get the whole mechanistic views on how to design drugs. Then I would probably have to do a postdoc after that to learn more about plants to put the two together."
Weigle joins six Southern Illinois students who have received the Goldwater Award or Honorable Mention since 2005. They are: Nathan Colley (2015, Honorable Mention), Lisa Furby (2009, Honorable Mention), Erin Shanle (2007), Jared Burde (2007), Kathleen Lask (2006), and Austin Mohr (2006).
Players Mentioned
