Two Siblings, One Shared Mission to Improve Lives

Logan and Mor­gan Zanger each began their Fresh­man year of col­lege hold­ing the Dr. Michael K. Ouwen­ga Schol­ar­ship, but three years apart: Logan in 2022 and Mor­gan in 2025. This pair of sib­lings deeply desires to share hope and improve lives, as evi­denced by their pur­suits since grad­u­at­ing from high school.

Logan shared how the TIPS for Kids pro­gram through the Thomp­son Cen­ter for Autism and Neu­rode­vel­op­ment in Colum­bia, Mis­souri, gave him a sense of pos­si­bil­i­ty in his career. Logan shared, ​“I learned so much from my men­tors and fel­low trainees across mul­ti­ple dis­ci­plines, includ­ing psy­chol­o­gy, phys­i­cal ther­a­py, occu­pa­tion­al ther­a­py, speech lan­guage pathol­o­gy, den­tistry, and advo­ca­cy. This pro­gram gave me a taste of what my future career could look like, and solid­i­fied my pas­sions for psy­cho­log­i­cal evaluations.”

Mor­gan shared that hands-on expe­ri­ence keeps her dri­ven, ​“The real-world inter­ac­tions with patients that I gained through EMT clin­i­cals have kept me pas­sion­ate about this career path. Being able to pro­vide a sense of calm for patients in the field when they were fac­ing the worst day of their lives con­firmed for me that this is what I want to do.”

They both expressed how the Dr. Michael K. Ouwen­ga Schol­ar­ship alle­vi­at­ed finan­cial con­cerns, allow­ing them to pur­sue var­i­ous oppor­tu­ni­ties. ​“This schol­ar­ship pro­vid­ed me with the oppor­tu­ni­ty to focus on my class­es and extracur­ric­u­lars for the first year,” Mor­gan shared. ​“I have had price­less expe­ri­ences that I would not have had with­out the secu­ri­ty pro­vid­ed to me by this schol­ar­ship, and I could not be more grateful.”

Logan grad­u­at­ed from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mis­souri-Colum­bia last spring with a degree in psy­chol­o­gy. This accom­plish­ment marks a step toward his goal. Logan shared, ​“I hope to grad­u­ate with a Doc­tor­ate in School Psy­chol­o­gy and admin­is­ter neu­ropsy­cho­log­i­cal tests in schools and hos­pi­tals, aid­ing in diag­nos­tic eval­u­a­tions for neu­rode­vel­op­men­tal dis­or­ders like autism and ADHD.”

Logan is work­ing at Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty in St. Louis as a Pro­fes­sion­al Rater II. He works in the psy­chi­a­try research depart­ment as a part of the Ear­ly Life Adver­si­ty, Bio­log­i­cal Embed­ding, and Risk for Devel­op­men­tal Pre­cur­sors of Men­tal Dis­or­ders (eLABE) study, housed with­in the Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty Neona­tal Devel­op­ment Research (WUN­DER) Lab.

Mor­gan is enter­ing her sec­ond year at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Iowa, where she is major­ing in Soci­ol­o­gy and minor­ing in Amer­i­can Sign Lan­guage (ASL). She is also con­sid­er­ing a dou­ble major in Bio­med­ical Engi­neer­ing and is on a pre-med track to become a gyne­col­o­gist at Barnes-Jew­ish Hos­pi­tal. Mor­gan plans to focus her research on women’s health. Addi­tion­al­ly, she has com­plet­ed her Nation­al Reg­is­tered Emer­gency Med­ical Tech­ni­cian (NREMT) certification.