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."