Ten honors students earn Ward Society research fellowships

Ten honors students spent the summer carrying out lab research with professors and physicians and Lipscomb and Vanderbilt.

From Staff Reports  |  07/01/2025

It’s the rare undergraduate student bound for medical or other health care professional schools who gets the opportunity to work hands-on with scientific research before earning their bachelor’s degree. 

At Lipscomb, however, the J.S. Ward Society and the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences have been providing that opportunity to students, including Honors College students, for almost ten years.

Since 2016, the society has awarded various student scholarships and research fellowship opportunities, and the numbers keep growing as students each year take advantage of Ward and other summer research fellowships and opportunities both on and off campus.

In 2025, the society honored 15 undergraduate students at the annual Ward Society Dinner, awarding 11 summer Ward Fellowships to work one-on-one with faculty at Meharry Medical School, Vanderbilt University and Lipscomb and recognizing four Langford-Yates Summer Research Fellows who will work with Lipscomb professors. New additions to the Ward Fellowships this year were the Mitchell Scholarship and the Herman G. LaVelle Endowed Scholarship for Research.

Ten Honors College students were awarded 2025 summer research fellowships provided by or honored by the Ward Society:

• Parmida Fard, who worked with Lipscomb biology faculty Amanda Williams (BS ’03);
• Jackson Head, who worked with Vanderbilt University Medical Center physician Eric Grogan (BS ’95);
• Ellie Griner, who worked with Lipscomb biology faculty Beth Conway (LA ’98);
• Riley Robertson, who worked at Vanderbilt University as part of its Undergraduate Clinical Research Internship Program (UCRIP)
• Morgan Martin, who worked with Vanderbilt UCRIP;
• Vina Nguyen, who worked with Meharry Medical College's Dr. Jermaine Davis;
• Kiomi Tanakura, who worked with Meharry's Cancer Summer Research Program;
• Rezheen Taher, who worked with Meharry's with Dr. Jermaine Davis;
• Malak Hauter, who worked with Lipscomb chemistry faculty Dr. Brian Cavitt; and
• Elena Harvey, who worked with Lipscomb chemistry faculty Morghan Morris.

The J. S. Ward Society is an alumni affinity group that supports Lipscomb’s health sciences programs and the university’s students to help them enter medicine, dentistry, pharmacy and many other allied health professions. 

The cornerstone of the program is the support of undergraduate research fellowships. 

“Undergraduate research is a transformative educational experience that offers students lasting and far-reaching benefits,” said Florah Mhlanga, executive director of the Ward Society and vice provost. “It cultivates essential skills such as problem-solving, communication, cognitive flexibility, creativity and collaboration, while deepening learning through close faculty mentorship. 

Students who participate in research are more likely to persist in their studies and are often stronger candidates for graduate and professional programs.”  

In the past few years, the Ward Society has also strengthened its professional mentoring, with a one-on-one option called Bison Docs and a small-group option with pre-health students gathering in homes to share a meal and informal discussion with health care specialists. In addition, the physician-in-residence program invites health care professionals to campus for afternoon “office hours” with students followed by evening seminar presentations on health care topics. 

Head, a senior from Brentwood, worked with Grogan this summer to carry out research that hopefully leads to a better way to diagnose lung cancer.

Grogan, associate professor of surgery and vice chair of research at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s Department of Thoracic Surgery, has mentored at least 10 Ward Fellows over the years in Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center’s MASLAB, a biobank storing blood and tissue specimens and clinical histories that one day may fuel earlier and less invasive detection of lung cancer.

He has mentored several honors students at the biobank through the Ward program, including Carolyn Tran (BS ’25) in 2024, and Timothy Khalil (BS ’23), who worked full-time in Grogan’s lab as a clinical/translational research coordinator in a gap year before heading to medical school.

“Health care is the field that I love and that I want to pursue, but by doing research, I can hopefully improve some aspects of health care, both now and in the future,” said Head.

This summer, Fard, a junior in molecular biology from Brentwood, worked with Lipscomb’s Williams on her project exploring the role of the innate immune peptide called HD5 and its presence in the colon in Crohn’s colitis patients. Fard has already been working on the project with Williams during the school year.

“Cell biology class allowed me to learn about different researchers and how their experiments shaped how we view different diseases,” said Fard. “This fellowship is a unique opportunity to engage in research on a deeper level and learn more about its clinical importance.”

Williams said that summer research, in particular, gives undergraduate students a more realistic and comprehensive glimpse of life in a research or health science career.

“They get the opportunity to see what it is like to work in a lab full-time. So many undergraduate students doing research in the school year are balancing classes, jobs, shadowing and student life,” said Williams. “Through a summer research project, they are able to focus full-time on that project, which means they are able to progress much further and get a lot more done.”

Local physicians are just as involved in the Ward mentoring programs, such as Bison Docs and Physician-in-Residence, as they are the research fellowships, said Mhlanga. Many of them have participated in the dinner conversations hosted by Raye (LA ’81, BS ’85) and Elise Mitchell in their home, providing invited students a meaningful window into the realities of life as a health care provider.