Scholars and
Fellows
halk up two Trumans, two Rockefellers, and a Mellon for Duke undergraduates
receiving scholarships and fellowships this spring. Juniors Erin H.
Abrams, of Northbrook, Illinois, and Christine M. Varnado, of Hattiesburg,
Mississippi, received Truman Scholarships; juniors Natasha Harris,
of Philadelphia, and Akil Edward Ross, of Washington, D.C., received
Rockefeller Brothers Fund Fellowships; and senior Kelvin Black, of
Fayetteville, North Carolina, won a Mellon Fellowship.
The Harry S Truman Scholarship Foundation awards scholarships of $3,000
for senior-year study and up to $27,000 for graduate or professional
students who plan to pursue careers in government or public service.
In addition, Truman scholars receive leadership-development training
and internship opportunities in the federal government. Duke students
have received thirty-three Truman scholarships since the program was
initiated in 1977. Between seventy-five and eighty Truman Scholarships
were awarded this year. Truman scholars are recognized for academic
accomplishments, leadership potential, and commitment to a career
in public service.
Abrams is a political science and comparative area studies major and
plans a career as an international human-rights lawyer. After graduating,
she intends to work for a humanitarian organization in Asia or Africa
before entering a professional program that would allow her to get
a joint degree in law and international relations.
A winner of the Lars Lyon Volunteer Service Award, sponsored by the
Community Service Center, Abrams has worked to establish a pilot domestic
violence prevention program at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in Goldsboro.
She also has coordinated the Women’s Center Safehaven Program
and held summer internships with the U.S. State Department Global
Affairs Bureau and the International Human Rights Law Institute.
Varnado, an Angier B. Duke Scholar, is an English major. After graduation,
she first intends to work abroad with the Peace Corps or, domestically,
teaching English to under-served communities. Ultimately, she plans
to enter an interdisciplinary Ph.D. program in literature and gender
studies. At Duke, she was editor of VOICES magazine, a publication
on gender and women’s issues; an outreach coordinator at the
Community Service Center; and a tutor for children at the Community
Shelter for Hope and at Genesis House. In 1999, she had a summer internship
working with international refugee adolescent girls.
The nationally competitive Rockefeller Brothers Fund Fellowships are
awarded to minority students who are entering the teaching profession.
Duke is one of twenty-five institutions in the United States to participate
in the program. Awards are presented to about twenty-five students
each year who are majoring in the arts and sciences and have shown
interest in graduate study leading to a job in teaching, either at
an American public elementary or secondary school. As part of the
fellowship, the students receive a grant of $2,500 for a project or
study that is related to teaching, and a fellowship of $12,000 for
a one-year program of graduate study or $16,000 for a two-year program.
Rockefeller recipient Harris will use her project grant to participate
in an innovative program in Philadelphia this summer, working with
researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and educators from
Philadelphia’s board of education to totally revamp an existing
school. She will assist in teacher hiring, forming school policies,
revising the curriculum, and even looking at teaching styles. At age
thirteen, Harris became the youngest educator ever hired by the American
Red Cross in Philadelphia. She taught area youths about conflict resolution,
AIDS education, and life skills.
Ross, a member of the Duke football team, hasn’t decided what
he will do with his project grant, but this summer he is interested
in participating in a community in-schools program in Durham. Like
Harris, he started young in teaching. In the ninth grade, he was a
“flight director” in Washington at a space-shuttle flight
simulator for children. The simulator, established in memory of the
Challenger astronauts, was designed to get young children get interested
in science.
As a Mellon Fellowship recipient, Black, an English major from Fayetteville,
won a nationally competitive award given to top students planning
to enter a Ph.D. program in the humanities. The fellowships, which
cover tuition and fees for the year and provide a stipend of $17,500,
are intended to help promising students prepare for careers of college
teaching and scholarship in humanistic fields. Ninety-two students
across the country received the fellowships this year; the awards
are sponsored by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
A Benjamin N. Duke Scholar and a Reginaldo Howard Scholar at Duke,
Black earlier won a Mellon Minority Undergraduate Fellowship for the
Humanities. He plans to pursue graduate study in English literature,
focusing on colonial and post-colonial British literature as well
as modern American and African-American literature.
Black studied in the Duke Oxford Program last summer. He also conducted
a summer research project in London on African and Asian-British aesthetics,
funded by a Benenson Award in the Arts and by an “Oceans Connect”
Summer Undergraduate Research Award at Duke. He is a member of the
Duke Honor Council, Prism House, and the executive advisory board
of the Office of University Scholars and Fellows. In the community,
he has tutored local youths and volunteered as an usher and lector
at Duke Chapel.
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