BCC graduate earns highest honor at University of Washington

BELLEVUE, WASH.– Imai Jen-La Plante, a graduate of Bellevue Community College, was presented one of two University of Washington President’s Medals at UW commencement ceremonies June 11.

UW President’s Medals are conferred on the two graduating seniors with the most distinguished academic records, with one of the medals going to a transfer student from a community college.

Jen-La Plante, a former Running Start student at BCC, completed her associate degree at BCC during her junior and senior years of high school. She was home schooled, graduating in 2002.

Originally from New York, Jen-La Plante has been a resident of Seattle for the past ten years.

A physics major at UW, she is a former recipient of a Washington NASA Space Grant Consortium Scholarship and completed NASA’s Summer Undergraduate Research Program in 2003.

Among other awards, Jen-La Plante has received the Andrew R. Hilen Essay Prize from the UW English department, the UW Undergraduate Scholar Award, the Gregory Lynn Andersen Scholarship in physics, the Dovie Samuelson Scholarship for women in science and technology and the Higgs/Osborn Prize for exceptional ability in laboratory courses.

As an undergraduate student, Jen-La Plante performed physics research in France under a National Science Foundation-funded program as well as at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Chicago.

Jen-La Plante’s future plans include pursuit of a Ph.D. in physics at the University of Chicago. This summer she will do research in particle physics at the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland.

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