Student’s Life-Changing Research Funded by Chemistry Professor’s Gift

PLU student Tran Hoang
spent last summer doing
research with the support
of a grant from longtime
chemistry professor
Dr. Laurence Huestis.

Junior Tran Hoang has decided to pursue a career in research after studying DNA last summer in a project funded by a grant from the late Dr. Laurence Huestis, who taught chemistry at PLU from 1961 to 1999. Tran says she never would have been able to spend the summer conducting research without the Laurence D. and Bonny M. Huestis Endowment for Faculty/Student Summer Research in Chemistry.

“The funds allowed me to be financially self-sufficient—to pay for housing and also for costs going into the academic year,” says Tran, a first-generation college student who was born in Vietnam. “If I had to have sought money elsewhere, I’m not sure where I would have turned.”

Dr. Huestis, who passed away in March of last year, mentored many PLU students and was committed to the transformative power of student-faculty undergraduate research; he often spoke of the impact it had on the lives of his students. The Huestis Endowment funded two students last summer.

Tran worked with Associate Professor of Chemistry Dr. Tina Saxowsky, studying mutations in the DNA of yeast cells. The project was designed to enhance the understanding of drug resistance, which has applications for how to make antibiotics and potentially how to treat cancer.

“The research reaffirmed my decision to change my career direction from where it started—to be a pediatrician—to where I am today, wanting to make research a career and to pursue a master’s degree in public health policy as well as a Ph.D. in biomedical sciences,” Tran says. “Last summer was so important in making me feel confident that I’m moving in the right direction.”