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Karen Medville
When Karen Medville was a teenager, she says, she was a "wild kid." She ran a bar and got pregnant at a young age. With a young child to support, Karen realized that her choices were to continue running the bar, to go on welfare, or to go to college. She decided to enroll at Pikes Peak Community College. When she started school, Karen tested at the sixth grade level. She decided to take remedial courses so that she could earn a nursing degree and support her daughter. Along the way, she discovered that she really enjoyed science. Instead of stopping her studies after earning an associate's degree, she went on to Colorado College. The experience was difficult and challenging for Karen, who felt different and inadequate compared to the other students. In addition to receiving poor grades, she was one of four single parents, a Cherokee Indian, and a woman.Despite the challenges she faced, Karen succeeded at Colorado College and went on to graduate school, first for a master's degree in physiology and biophysics from Colorado State University and then for a Ph.D. in environmental toxicology from Cornell University. Her area of concentration is the study of low levels of lead poisoning and the effects of lead poisoning on nerve and muscle development. Lead poisoning affects many children in the United States, causing brain damage and learning problems. Karen wants to know if there is any acceptable level of lead that will not have harmful effects.
In her present research and in her work outside of research, Karen thinks about her own difficult background. She spends each summer teaching environmental science to teenage students in the Mohawk community in upstate New York, partly because she feels that science is an important subject to master and partly because she understands the importance of having someone to look up to. As a teenager, she recalls, she did not have a role model. She speaks to Native-American organizations around the country and is involved with several organizations that promote science education for young people.
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