CHELSEA PETERS
OF RHODES COLLEGE, a junior pitcher on
the softball team, has been selected the SCAC Character &
Community Female Student-Athlete-of-the-Week for the week ending
March 27, 2011.
Peters, a two-time Honorable Mention all-SCAC
pitcher, is Chemistry Major with a 3.94 cumulative GPA.
Peters is involved in numerous activities on
campus, including Green Rhodes, a student lead environmental group.
She also serves as a Lab Assistant in the Rhodes Chemistry
Deptaretment.
Co-president of the FCA, Peters is involved
in Tuesday Fellowship, Reformed University Fellowship, and Rhodes
Religious Leaders Organization.
In addition to her campus work, Peters has been extremely busy in
several off-campus activites.
Peters has served as a volunteer at the Memphis
Zoo Conservation Research Lab for two years. In that
role, she has conducted research that focuses on the
characterization of seasonal reproductive hormones and the
reproductive cycle in critically endangered Snow Leopards. The
project is designed to contribute to a greater understanding of the
reproductive physiology of the species for which little is known,
and to aid in captive husbandry and breeding
efforts. Peters has helped teach other
Rhodes' student research volunteers some of the lab techniques
and practices she developed on her own, and she will be listed as
a co-author of the project when it is published.
During the Summer of 2010, Peters was involved in
a four-week field research project in the McCarthy Creek Valley of
Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve in Alaska. The
project was a study of the geomorphology of the McCarthy Creek
Valley - which had been unstudied prior to the group's study
- through analysis of exposed bluffs along the creek. Working
with three other students from across the nation, a
formal report, "The Geomorphology of McCarthy Creek
Valley," was assembled and presented to the scientific
community of McCarthy, Ark. The research project - of which
Peters is once again listed as a
co-author, is archived at the Wrangell Mountains Center - a
private nonprofit institute that fosters understanding,
appreciation, and stewardship in Alaska’s Wrangell-St. Elias
National Park and Preserve. The study will be continued by Wrangell
Mountains Center students in years to come.
In addition, Peters will next year
participate in the Rhodes College Fellowship Program as a
part of the Ruka Intentional Community. She will live with five
other girls serving as the Environmentalist as the
group chooses to live environmentally sustainable. The
community is focused on serving Rhodes and the surrounding Memphis
community. Peters will be doing community service
10 hours a week at Caritas Village, a Christian community center in
Binghamton.
Among her many honors, Peters is in the Mortar
Board National College Honor Society, and was a Goldwater
Scholarship Nominee in 2010.
"Her character and integrity are her strongest qualities, and I
can’t say enough about her as a person," says her head
softball coach David Hicks. "She is without a doubt one of
those students who make Rhodes a better place."