We’re very pleased to announce that Lauren McDonnell of Menlo Park, California, has been awarded our third Turner Pest Control scholarship in the amount of $1,000! Ms. McDonnell will be a graduate student next year at Dartmouth College studying Health Data Science.

Scholarship candidates were asked to submit an essay describing their commitment to community or volunteer service, how their service affected a community’s quality of life, and plans they have for future volunteer or community service involvement.

Ms. McDonnell was selected for her outstanding contributions as a volunteer focused on health and wellness. She has volunteered hundreds of hours for Engineers Without Borders, worked to help build clean water solutions in rural Kenya, and overseen projects throughout Central America, East Africa, and Southeast Asia.

A former software engineer, Ms. McDonnell devoted herself to full-time work on global health projects that would utilize her technical background. Using technology to remove barriers to better health, such as improving access to clean water, aligns with Turner’s own role as a protector of public health and property by ensuring we support a safer, healthier living environment.

In response to learning that she was the scholarship winner, Ms. McDonnell said that having studied economics as an undergraduate, she is well aware of how compounding interest rates can “exponentially increase the cost of a student loan” and that the scholarship is “worth so much more than its face value as it will go a long way to prevent me from accruing a lot of student debt.”

In her application, she said, “By pursuing a graduate degree in health, and in particular one with a quantitative focus, I can markedly increase my competency and have a more informed and substantial impact on future projects.” We have no doubt that Ms. McDonnell will have that impact and more—congratulations from the team at Turner Pest Control!