Stephanie Maddox

Stephanie Maddox

Top research student: Don't wait to explore opportunities

  • Hometown: Columbia
  • High School: Dreher High School
  • Major: Psychology
  • Video (1:25)

Stephanie Maddox says getting involved in undergraduate research helped her bring her education and career goals together. The abundance of research opportunities was a major factor in her decision to attend the University of South Carolina.

While at the university, she was named a Magellan scholar and earned a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Undergraduate Research Fellowship. She presented her research at Discovery Day and was one of 10 students nationally selected to participate in the university's prestigious National Science Foundation Summer Research Institute.

This fall, Maddox will take her research experiences and head to Yale University as a National Defense Science and Engineering graduate fellow to conduct neuroscience research on the underpinnings of anxiety and fear.

“I'm very excited,” said Maddox, who has worked as a research assistant for three years in the Surrey L. Buchanan neuroscience laboratory at the medical school under Dr. Don Powell and Dr. Barbara Oswald. “I feel prepared in research methods and statistics. I want to study how adverse memories stay in the brain and eventually be a professor and have a full-time research lab.

“Dr. Oswald helped me focus my goals, and Dr. Powell encouraged me to stick with my research,” said Maddox. “Dr. Jim Appell in psychology has always been encouraging whenever things got really stressful. He would listen, read drafts of fellowship applications and grant proposals and really helped me to better myself.”

Maddox also honed her leadership and mentoring skills by serving as president of Psi Chi honor society and as a supplemental instructor for psychology statistics.

What advice would this budding neuroscience scholar give other students who may be interested in student research?

“Don't wait,” said Maddox. “Be proactive, and seek out opportunities. Get to know your professors as soon as possible, and zero in on the professors and offices on campus that can help you. I made connections with professors here who care and who were willing to put in the extra effort to make sure that I was successful.”

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The University of South Carolina's 2008 graduates are off and running. Some have already landed their first real jobs. Others have enrolled in prestigious graduate programs throughout the country. Learn more about a few of these former students and where they've landed.