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Thomas Jefferson University has named Melissa Mitchell ’03 (Merchantville, N.J.) its assistant director of annual giving.
Her fundraising responsibilities cover the university’s hospital and its three schools: Jefferson Medical College, the College of Health Professions, and the College of Graduate Studies. She interned at the Philadelphia school’s Office of Institutional Advancement last summer.
Mitchell graduated summa cum laude in May, earning a bachelor of arts with majors in psychology and economics & business. She was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, the oldest and most respected undergraduate honors organization in the United States; Psi Chi, the national honor society for psychology; and Omicron Delta Epsilon, the national economics honor society.
“Lafayette greatly built not only my communication abilities in dealing with different types of people on an everyday basis, but also a greater understanding of the huge role monetary assets play in everyday life, especially when considering philanthropy,” she says. “Both of these are invaluable lessons in my current career.”
Throughout much of her time in college, Mitchell conducted research with Jamila Bookwala, assistant professor of psychology, as a participant in Lafayette’s distinctive EXCEL Scholars program, in which students collaborate closely with professors while earning a stipend. Many of the 180 students who participate each year go on to publish papers in scholarly journals and/or present their research at conferences.
“I loved working with Professor Bookwala,” says Mitchell, a Trustee Scholarship recipient. “She is so dedicated to her field of study, and her enthusiasm about our research was contagious.”
Mitchell was heavily involved with The Memory Loss Education Project, a study that assessed early memory loss in older adults with a goal of understanding the role of social and marital support as potential protective factors. Mitchell began the study as a volunteer for a community service project aimed at educating senior citizens about early signs of memory loss. She quickly became an EXCEL participant, gathering and organizing data and studying the results.
Mitchell and Bookwala reported their findings from the project in November 2002 as panel members at the Gerontological Society of America’s Annual Symposium. They also presented a paper that looked at the long-term impact that the presence or absence of children has on depression.
The last of Mitchell’s EXCEL projects was a study on marital quality and health in late adulthood, during which she and Bookwala sought to confirm the hypothesis that people who are married enjoy better health in adulthood than those who are unmarried.
“Lafayette provided the ideal resources and atmosphere for this project,” says Mitchell. “We had our own research space in Oechsle Hall where we could enter our data into two computers at once, and perform more phone interviews from our own personal line.”
Mitchell also took part in group EXCEL work with Joseph Catalliotti, visiting professor of psychology, that explored visual perception, focusing on whether identifying neutral colors is the job of the eye’s retina or the brain itself.
Mitchell was a tour guide, a sister in Alpha Phi sorority, and an executive board member of the Student Alumni Association.