Louisiana Tech senior Biology major Lillian Blanchard was recently awarded a Pioneer Award worth $1,000 from The Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi, the nation’s oldest and most selective collegiate honor society for all academic disciplines.
Initiated into Phi Kappa Phi in 2025 at Tech, Blanchard is one of 50 students nationwide to receive the award.
The Pioneer Awards are designed to encourage and reward undergraduate members for developing the research, engagement, and leadership skills necessary to become a successful scholar.
“Lily is one of our top students in Biology and is very passionate and excited about research,” Dr. Julia Earl, associate professor in Tech’s School of Biological Sciences, said. “She has been working in my lab for nearly two years and has completed two summer undergraduate research experiences abroad, one in Ghana and one in Costa Rica, which is a remarkable achievement. She has also presented her results at Louisiana Tech, at the Southeastern Entomology meeting, and at an online international meeting on insect declines; she is already making an impact in the field.
“Lily has shown a great interest in scientific writing,” Earl said. “This shows how serious and dedicated she is to research.”
The selection process for a Pioneer Award is based on the applicant’s academic achievement, honors and awards, relevant research experience, service and leadership experience both on and off campus, a personal statement, and a letter of recommendation.
A graduate of the Louisiana School for Math, Science, and the Arts in Natchitoches and a native of Thibodaux, Blanchard applied for the prestigious Pioneer Award in the spring and received a congratulatory email in late summer before her winning was publicly announced.
“The [scholarship] money will be used to fund my educational needs as well as necessities,” Blanchard said. “The scholarship greatly reduces the financial burden of attending school.”
This school year, she is finishing her coursework, applying for graduate school in hopes of continuing her entomological research, working on an Honors thesis, and focusing on the student organizations she is part of, including oSTEM, Women in STEM, and the Honors Student Advisory Board.
Blanchard’s varied interests include ecological science and genomics, specifically entomology (insects) and odonates, predatory flying insects such as dragonflies and damselflies.
“I’ve definitely fallen into a niche kind of research,” she said. “The joy for me comes from how important the dragonflies and damselflies are to ecology — and to humans. It feels like a given that we should know as much as we possibly can about nature’s best hunters. Odonates are great mosquito eaters during their whole lives and have a unique way of flying. There is so much we don’t know about entomology as a whole; narrowing things down to odonatology, there is lots to be explored. Dragonflies have developed unique wing structures over time that we are still working on understanding.
“I love that I’m contributing to an ever-growing body of knowledge in a meaningful way, in a field the average person may not think about,” she said. “And I love telling people about it.”
The Pioneer Award, established in 2022, is the newest addition to the Society’s robust portfolio of award and grant programs, which currently gives more than $1 million each year to outstanding students and members through graduate and dissertation fellowships, funding for post-baccalaureate development, and grants for local, national, and international literacy initiatives.