Arlan Norman Award for Excellence in Student Mentoring

Melissa Rice - Geology/Physics & Astronomy

Melissa Rice is a professor of Planetary Science in both WWU’s Geology and Physics & Astronomy departments, where she has been a faculty member since 2014. Her research focuses on the geology of Mars and is supported by over $2 million in external grants. The Western Mars Lab, Melissa’s research group, includes research staff, postdocs, graduate and undergraduate students. To help interpret data from NASA’s Mars rovers, Melissa runs a reflectance spectroscopy laboratory on campus, which her group uses to study the properties of Mars analog rocks and minerals. She received WWU’s Paul J. Olscamp Research Award in 2022.

Melissa has mentored 10 master’s students and 35 undergraduate students across various STEAM disciplines at WWU. As a team member on NASA's Perseverance and Curiosity rover missions, Melissa is one of a small number of scientists who have involved undergraduates in actual rover planning and operations. Melissa also worked with undergraduate students to help design aspects of Perseverance’s Mastcam-Z cameras. Of her undergraduate mentees, 19 have presented at professional conferences, 12 have participated directly in NASA Mars rover mission operations, nine have contributed to peer-reviewed publications, and eight have continued on to competitive graduate programs.

Ying Bao - Chemistry

Associate Professor of Chemistry Ying Bao highly values the opportunity to mentor students — both in the classroom and the research lab — and is passionate about supporting and empowering students from all backgrounds to succeed.

Ying’s research group focuses on the development of functional metallic nanomaterials for applications in sensing, catalysis, and imaging. She has secured approximately $1 million in external funding to support both her research and shared instrumentation. Since joining WWU seven years ago, she has mentored six master’s students and twenty-two undergraduates, with two master’s and nine undergraduate students currently active in her group. Seventeen of her mentees have coauthored the group’s 10 peer-reviewed publications, produced through both independent and collaborative efforts. Her students regularly present their work at regional and national conferences in both oral and poster formats. To date, nine of her students have gone on to pursue graduate or professional degrees, while seven have obtained research positions in industry.

Ying received her B.E. Degree in Pharmaceutical Engineering at Zhejiang Chinese Medical University, China, in 2008.  She then came to the United States and earned a Ph.D. in Chemistry at the University of South Dakota in 2013. Ying worked as a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Chicago before coming to Western as a faculty member in 2017.