Trinity Alumna Receives Prestigious National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship

Audrey Davis ’24 still remembers the box of rocks that arrived at her doorstep during her first year as a Trinity University student in Spring 2021. She was fully remote that year, navigating science classes and labs through a screen, yet her professors in the Department of Earth and Environmental Geosciences went out of their way to include her. They sent those rocks and shared a virtual microscope program so that she could experience hands-on learning despite the hundreds of miles between them.

“They did so much to include those of us who were learning remotely to make sure we were getting a quality education. That sold me on my major,” says the Dallas-Fort Worth native.

That sense of academic support, community, and belonging helped Davis find her way from uncertainty to purpose, culminating in being awarded the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (NSF-GRFP) for her research in Geosciences - Biogeochemistry. The NSF-GRFP is a highly sought-after award, with only about 5% of applicants selected in past years. Its distinguished alumni include Google co-founder Sergey Brin, astronomer Amy Mainzer, and Nobel Prize-winning physicist Eric Cornell.

“I’m incredibly grateful and happy to have received this award. It’s helped change and shape what I was going to do for grad school by opening up an opportunity I wasn’t sure I was necessarily going to have,” Davis shares.

Coming from a small high school with just six seniors in the graduating class, Davis did not have the course options to explore different scientific disciplines to the extent that she had wanted. She did not have to worry about that at Trinity, though.

With the Semmes Distinguished Scholars in Science Scholarship in hand, Davis eagerly sampled courses across almost every STEM department. “I knew I wanted to do something very interdisciplinary because I’ve never really been a person who has one single interest,” she explains.

Davis’ First-Year Experience course, “Climate Changed,” inspired her to settle into environmental geosciences. She then served as that course’s peer tutor her sophomore year. “Even after I was no longer in the class or the peer tutor, I would still go to Professor Jennifer Bartlett’s office hours to catch up. She maintained an interest in what I was up to, and I was really appreciative of that,” Davis recalls.

By the end of her sophomore year, Davis had unlocked a new passion with a minor in chemistry, which she admits she “was not a fan of in high school,” by studying it in the context of environmental geochemistry and hydrology through research with Brady Ziegler, Ph.D. That research ultimately became her senior thesis, “Geochemical Mechanisms of Trace Element Mobilization and Attenuation in a Crude-Oil Contaminated Aquifer.”

With the NSF-GRFP, Davis will be starting a Master of Science in Environmental Science and Engineering this fall at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Gillings School of Global Public Health, the nation’s top-ranked public school of public health. She is looking forward to continuing her geochemistry research to help develop solutions for environmental issues, coupled with garnering experience in policy and science communication to advocate for such solutions.

“As much as I love delving into what’s happening at the microscopic level with trace element mobilization and organic geochemistry, I really love environmental science because it’s science that helps people and the planet. It explores how environmental pollution sources are not only mechanically happening, but who they’re affecting, how they’re affecting them, and how we can help resolve these things,” Davis says.

Davis credits a course outside of her science curriculum with piquing her interest in public policy, inspiring her to dive deeper into it in graduate school.

“In the fall of my senior year, I took Dr. Lauren Turek’s ‘U.S. Society and Politics Since 1945’ course. Outside of courses related to my major, that was my favorite class I took at Trinity. I think that’s a testament to Trinity’s liberal arts approach to education,” Davis says. She won the “Research Thing” Prize from Coates Library for her final paper in that class, in which she investigated the rise of support for STEM fields for high school girls in the 2010s.

At Trinity, Davis thrived just as much outside of the lab as she did within it. She was involved in the Geology Club, the Earth sciences honor society Sigma Gamma Epsilon, and Phi Beta Kappa, the nation’s oldest and most prestigious academic honor society. She also served as the social media coordinator and event coordinator for the Trinity Art Collective, a student organization aimed at creating, experiencing, and investing in the local San Antonio art scene. Davis says, “The art market was one of my favorite days of the semester.”

Davis felt like her Trinity journey came full circle when she attended the geosciences alumni field trip to Enchanted Rock and Pedernales Falls on March 1, 2025, to celebrate the careers of Diane Smith, Ph.D., and Glenn Kroeger, Ph.D., both of whom retired after the spring semester.

“That was a very precious moment to me, even though I had only been an alum for less than 10 months at that point. Because of COVID-19, I didn’t get to go on the usual Enchanted Rock field trip in my intro geosciences course. It was really special to reconnect with some of my amazing professors like Dr. Kathy Surpless and Dr. Ben Surpless,” Davis says.

In addition to impactful undergraduate research and faculty mentorship, Davis treasures the exchange of experiences at Trinity.

“I think there are a lot of really fascinating people at Trinity who have really great hearts,” she reflects. “I love that I not only got to take interdisciplinary classes, but I also got to spend time with very interdisciplinary people.”