NPRE senior Richard A. Boettcher is the 2010 winner of the College of Engineering’s Lisle Abbott Rose Memorial Award.
Friends of Lisle Abbott Rose, former director of public information for the College of Engineering, established a fund in his memory from which an award is made annually to recognize an outstanding senior student in engineering. In 1994, Mildred Maddux Rose, Lisle’s widow, endowed the award in perpetuity. It is awarded annually to a student who most nearly approaches the ideal of technical excellence combined with cultural breadth, depth, and sensitivity.
As a nontraditional student, Boettcher has life experiences that have afforded him a unique perspective, guiding both his undergraduate and intended graduate education and future career.
Coming from a rural, below-the-poverty-line family, Boettcher joined the Navy after high school, becoming a nuclear reactor operator and Navy diver.
While still on active duty, he had a “life-changing experience,” — aiding his aunt-a 41-old, deaf single mother-in her fight against cancer. Working through the process of researching her condition and communicating treatment options to her and their extended family, he helped her add two more years of quality life, while altering his own career path-to attend college with the intent of becoming a research oncologist.
Since arriving on campus in 2005, he has served as an undergraduate research assistant at the Beckman Institute. Boettcher earned substantial responsibility in various projects relating to cancer research.
He also took advantage of a scholarship that allowed him to study in China. During his 11 months studying abroad, he interned in the radiology department at Beijing’s Tongren Hospital. He was in China when an earthquake struck, and he spent his spring break helping with the relief efforts in the earthquake zone. Using his language and military training, Boettcher supervised the distribution of American relief supplies and ensured that sanitary conditions existed at a makeshift refugee camp in Jiuzhou Stadium.
Returning to Illinois, Boettcher has served as a Provena Hospice volunteer. Currently he is a Fulbright Fellowship finalist, with plans to travel to Harbin, China, in August if he wins the award. There, he would be part of an intensive language program for one semester. He also would like to travel to Hangzhou, China, in January to study the Chinese medical educational and research system at Zhejiang University. He would take part in the research hospital’s radiology department and attend medical classes, while observing, writing and studying how the Chinese apply translational medicine from bench to bedside. His plans also include applying for an MD/PhD program or enrolling in medical school to study cancer research.
As the winner of the Lisle Abbott Rose Memorial Award, Boettcher will receive a cash award and will have an individual plaque bearing his name placed on the permanent memorial in Engineering Hall.
He said of the honor, “I am deeply humbled to receive the Lisle Abbott Rose Memorial Award, which is named for a pillar of this university. The university has afforded me a multitude of academic, cultural and service-based opportunities for which I am most grateful. I will endeavor to live up to the ideals embodied by this award.”