Above:Carrera: University Scholar with international interests Below: Ellsworth: back to "normal life" after bone-graft surgery Photos: above, Les Todd; below, Paul O. Boisvert

Documenting Diversity

It's been an unusually warm autumn on the Duke campus. In the last week of October, some spring bulbs are confused and begin to send up shoots. Leaves are falling, but not in the usual colorful rush of wind and rain. It is nearly seventy degrees this Monday morning as Mariana Carrera, a senior from Wellesley, Massachusetts, leaves her house on Buchanan Boulevard and walks to the East Campus bus stop for a ride to the Sanford Institute of Public Policy. Today there's another case study in international law to be examined with the help of political science professor Robert Keohane. Carrera's major research paper for Keohane this term is on the role that diamonds play in fueling conflicts in Africa.

Carrera, whose parents are Peruvian immigrants, has always had a fascination with international affairs. She's spent two summers as an intern in South America, and in the spring of 2003, she studied in France. Her internships and study abroad are funded, in part, by Duke's University Scholars Program, which also provides full tuition for her four years here. The program was started with a $20-million grant from the Gates foundation. (Duke trustee Melinda French Gates '86, M.B.A. '87 and her husband, Bill Gates, are on the foundation's board.) Though Carrera considered Harvard, Yale, and Stanford, she says the University Scholars' finalist weekend at Duke sealed the deal. "The vitality and intellectual activity at the annual University Scholars Seminar--both among the graduate and undergraduate students--made me want to be a part of that," she says.

What Carrera witnessed on her initial visit to Durham has continued to hold true. "We don't have classes or required events, but lots of optional activities," she says. "Sometimes it's a guest lecturer or a dinner with faculty where students present their current work." The University Scholars program is based on the notion that very high-achieving students from diverse backgrounds will inspire one another and the campus at large.

"The graduate students are great mentors," Carrera says, "always open to helping the undergrads think about our future plans--grad school or whatever."

As Mariana Carrera arrives at the Sanford Institute for her morning class, some 700 miles away from the Duke campus, seventeen-year-old Avery Ellsworth is already in the middle of Law 2, his favorite course, taught by headmaster David Wilson at the Long Trail School in Dorset, Vermont. Ellsworth had a successful hip replacement last summer at Duke Medical Center through an innovative surgery known as a free vascularized fibular graft. The procedure, performed by surgeon James Urbaniak, Virginia Flowers Baker Professor of orthopedic surgery, involved removing a four-inch portion of Ellsworth's fibula (the smaller leg bone between knee and ankle) and grafting it into his hip. As a result of a skiing injury, Ellsworth had been suffering from avascular necrosis, a condition caused by inadequate blood flow to the ball joint, located where the leg attaches to the hip. Left untreated, avascular necrosis will cause the bone to die and, eventually, the hip joint will collapse.

Record-breaking Loyalty

Ellsworth could have been a candidate for an artificial hip replacement. But, because he's so young and because the artificial joints wear out in fifteen to twenty years, he likely would have had to have several hip replacements over his lifetime. As Urbaniak explains, "In most surgical procedures, if you can perform reconstructions using the patient's own tissue, the results will be better. The body will eventually reject all foreign implants. For me, the significance of the procedure is that it represents the future of reconstructive surgery, because we are using the patient's tissue to reconstruct diseased or damaged joints."

Ellsworth was Urbaniak's 2,000th patient to undergo the procedure. Only a handful of surgeons perform the operation in fewer than a dozen hospitals worldwide. All were trained by Urbaniak.

For Avery Ellsworth, on this crisp October morning in his native New England, it's just back to "normal life." He says he's down to one crutch, "and the hip feels solid--it's coming along." Only six weeks after the surgery, he was driving. "Standard transmission," he says proudly. And skiing is "most definitely" in his future. He'll only come back to Duke this summer--for a final checkup with Urbaniak on the anniversary of his surgery.

Back on campus, Mariana Carrera is now making her way from Bob Keohane's class to the Social Sciences Building on the main quad, where she'll check in with economics professor Pat Bajari. Carrera, who is majoring in economics and political science, works as Bajari's research assistant on a project examining the relationship between labor-union activities and the price index in certain U.S. cities from 1985 to 2003. But her true passion--the coursework that has inspired her the most this fall--is working on documentary films under Gary Hawkins, a visiting instructor in public-policy studies and the Duke Program in Film/Digital/Video.

Her assignment is the production of a ten-minute video documenting the daily life of the Orellanas, a Salvadoran family that recently launched a restaurant on Roxboro Road in northern Durham. The family sublets space in a combination gas station and convenience store that's owned by a native of India.

"Right now, the business isn't going too well," Carrera says. "To make ends meet, the mother and father work cleaning jobs from five p.m. to one a.m., and their daughters work the restaurant in the evenings."

Carrera is fond of the Orellanas' specialty--pupusas, corn tortillas stuffed with melted mozzarella and Salvadoran cheeses. "And I love the fried plantains and beans," she says. However, the gas-station owner (who happens to be vegetarian) thinks that the family should change the menu to chicken wings and hot dogs--popular items at another convenience store run by a relative in Smithfield.

"It's a very rich human experience," says Carrera, who says she was surprised by the growing blend of cultures in Durham. Her only concern about the project is that she has so much great footage and will have a hard time editing it down to ten minutes.

She will videotape the family today and again on Friday night, which happens to be Halloween. In the meantime, she'll go to a pre-Halloween party for University Scholars at director Victoria Lodewick's house, where the group will eat pumpkin pie and play Scrabble. "The other nights, I'll be editing my footage or working in the library, and I'll get home between midnight and two a.m.," Carrera says.