Montana State graduate receives prestigious Phi Kappa Phi fellowship

BOZEMAN – Ellie Jackson, a 2022 Montana State University graduate in cell biology and neuroscience, has been awarded a prestigious fellowship from the nation’s oldest collegiate honor society, Phi Kappa Phi.

Jackson, who is originally from Bozeman and is planning a career as a family physician in a rural community, said she will use the $8,500 fellowship to pursue a master’s degree in public health at the University of Washington beginning this fall. Though her end goal is to become a rural health care provider, she believes her studies in UW’s Community-Oriented Public Health Practice program will provide a solid public health background and enable her to provide services more effectively in a small community.

“I wanted to do this master’s program before medical school because I do really have a passion for public health,” Jackson said. “I chose that program because it’s specific to what I want to do, which is community-oriented work.”

In the year since she graduated from MSU, Jackson has worked in a number of different roles at a community health clinic in Three Forks, where she says she has learned a lot about the workings of a small-town clinic and strengthened her resolve – initially forged through her academic and extracurricular activities at MSU – to become a rural health care provider.

As an undergraduate, Jackson was a Cameron Presidential Scholar in the Honors College and active in many campus organizations, including student government. She represented the College of Letters and Science for two years as an elected ASMSU senator and was ASMSU Senate vice president during her second term. In 2019, she participated, through the Office of Student Engagement, in a BreaksAway trip to the U.S.-Mexico border, where she says she learned about health issues facing migrants. For three years, she served as director of the HEART Initiative, a student organization committed to furthering awareness of human trafficking and encouraging action to prevent it. And for one summer, she managed the Bounty of the Bridgers Food Pantry on campus with the goal of making the service more widely accessible and destigmatizing the experience of food insecurity.

“Ellie was an incredible student who fully utilized the opportunities available for undergraduate students at Montana State University,” said Jeff Heys, MSU’s Phi Kappa Phi chapter president and MSU Honors College acting dean during the 2023 fellowship nomination process.

In addition to her major studies in the Department of Microbiology and Cell Biology in the College of Agriculture, Jackson earned minors in Hispanic studies and global health in MSU’s College of Letters and Science. Together with seminars she took through the Honors College, “a lot of those classes informed my interest in health and medicine and inspired my passion for public health,” she said.

Mary Cloninger, who was Jackson’s honors organic chemistry professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, said she has no doubt that her former student will attain her professional goals.

“She will thrive in the more advanced curriculum,” she said. “She’s going to be excited to do more school, and she’s going to do it well.”

Jackson participated in an internal competition before being invited by the Honors College to apply for the national fellowship. The selection criteria include evidence of an applicant’s graduate potential, service and leadership experience, and undergraduate academic achievement. Jackson’s mentors say she excelled in all areas.

She’s a scholar, she’s a hard worker and she’s absolutely dedicated to serving the community, whether that be at MSU or outside,” Cloninger said.

Heys added, “As a freshman, Ellie studied how influenza mutates so that we can design better vaccines in the future. Later, she studied growth of and interactions of neurons to help us better understand neurodegenerative diseases, and this work is the basis of her honors thesis.

“We cannot wait to see what this incredibly talented and hard-working student does next,” he said.

Though Jackson has received much recognition for her scholarship and service – her many accolades in 2022 included MSU’s Award for Excellence, Student Organization Leader of the Year Award, Torlief Aasheim Community Involvement Award and Ethelyn C. Harris Award – she said being named a Phi Kappa Phi fellow is especially meaningful.

“It’s something I’m really grateful for as a first-generation graduate student. The fellowship will be of tremendous help,” she said. “The support of the Honors College was huge, helping me and supporting me along the way. It set me up really well to be a recipient of this award.”

Jackson said she expects to return to Montana after she finishes her higher degrees.

"Having grown up in Montana and now working in Three Forks, I have a deep appreciation for working in a rural community and realizing how we have limited access to (health) care compared to other states nationwide,” she said. “I think I definitely want to come back and give back to the state I grew up in.”