Graduate student Julia Clarke receives second place in poster contest at the LSAMP-AGEP conference.

On November 3-4, 2006, Purdue University hosted the Second Annual Joint Conference of the Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (LSAMP) and Midwest Crossroads Alliance for Graduate Education for the Professorate (AGEP). Civil Engineering graduate student Julia Clarke was the second Place winner in the graduate competition for her poster presentation on "The Micro-Structural Breakdown and Recovery of Bentonite Suspensions Modified by Sodium Pyrophosphate." The conference involved three universities and offered both undergraduate and graduate students opportunities to participate in educational workshops, to visit several college fair exhibitions, to listen to keynote speakers, and to present their research projects by oral or poster board presentations.

LSAMP promotes the further education of undergraduates in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics in graduate programs and AGEP promotes graduate students into professional careers in academia. Both are sponsored by the National Science Foundation.

Julia is working with Professor Vincent P. Drnevich, Assistant Professor Marika Santagata, and Associate Professor Antonio Bobet in Civil Engineering, and Professor Cliff Johnston in the Department of Agronomy. She came to Purdue as an AGEP Fellow in the summer of 2005 and did her undergraduate work at the University of South Florida.