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Langhurst receives national
Gertrude Cox Award
KeTrena Langhurst, a 2004 Phi Beta Kappa graduate of NC State with a double major in statistics and applied mathematics, is one of three national winners of the 2004 Gertrude Cox Scholarship for Women in Graduate Statistics Programs.
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Langhurst
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Langhurst is just the second NC State student to win the national award, which is named after the first head of the statistics department at NC State.
Named the Outstanding Senior Scholar and valedictorian of her graduating class in statistics, Langhurst maintained a 4.0 average in honors programs in both majors while working 20 hours per week and volunteering in numerous charitable organizations on and off campus.
In her undergraduate career, Langhurst was a recipient of an NSF traineeship through the Statistics Department’s VIGRE (Vertical Integration of Graduate Research and Education) program, won a highly competitive Duke Energy Technology Scholarship, co-authored and presented research on air quality data analysis at the 2003 annual conference of the Air and Waste Management Association in San Diego, and is a member of numerous academic honors societies.
Now a first-year doctoral student in statistics at NC State, Langhurst’s outstanding academic performance is exceeded only by her extraordinary record of service to others.
As an officer of Gamma Beta Phi, an academic and service honors society, Langhurst started collection programs for Toys for Tots and for the Food Bank of North Carolina, successfully extending the food drive campus-wide to beat a challenge from the UNC Chapel Hill chapter. As the youngest board member of the Piedmont Dancers Association at age 17, Langhurst helped lead their campaigns on behalf of the Marine Corp’s Toys for Tots program and for Hospice of North Carolina, for whom they raised more than $10,000 last year.
Her other volunteer
work has included Adopt-a-Highway, fundraising for health
advocacy groups, tutoring in Girls Club, stints with Habitat for Humanity
(roofing is her specialty), and mentoring freshmen facing health or academic
difficulties.
Langhurst’s devotion to helping others and to pursuing a career in statistics
arose from the same source: overcoming a history of domestic violence that left
her family traumatized, fatherless, and saddled with debt. Through family counseling,
she became aware of victim’s rights and laws against domestic abuse. She
also learned how widespread and under-reported the problem is.
“Upon learning the statistics about domestic violence, I became interested in where those statistics originated. I began focusing on mathematics, probability, and statistics,” she said.
Planning on a career in social statistics, Langhurst is committed to volunteering at women’s shelters, raising the awareness of abuse in the world, and helping end domestic violence through community education and counseling.
“My family has learned that life is not easy, but we do not have
to make it alone. With the help of others, our individual struggles are
made easier,” Langhurst
said.
“I truly believe that I get more out of volunteering than those that I’m
helping,” she continued. “The joy on the kids’ and
the family’s
faces, or just the knowledge that I’m doing a good thing, makes
me swell with pride and all the more eager to continue my work. That
is exactly what I
intend to do throughout my graduate career, and throughout my life.”
The
national Gertrude Cox Scholarship, offered to outstanding scholars
entering or continuing graduate school in statistics, is named after
the first head
of the Statistics Department at NC State University. Last year, Susan
Hunter (MS
Statistics, 2004) became the first NC State student to win the award.
Posted September 2, 2004
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