Three students have been named 2008-2009 Hart Fellows. This year’s Fellows join the 63 Duke graduates the Hart Fellows Program has supported to date, who have completed research projects and honed their leadership skills in 29 countries from Azerbaijan to Zimbabwe.

 

All three Hart Fellows will begin their programs in July 2008 and return in late spring 2009. They were chosen on the basis of their commitment to excellence and their potential for research service-learning. The 2008-2009 Hart Fellows are:

 

Grant Smith

Grant Smith

Grant Smith, of Knoxville, Tennessee, who will graduate in May with a major in psychology and a minor in biology. A member of Phi Beta Kappa, Smith received a Deans’ Summer Research Fellowship in the summers of 2006 and 2007, to continue his work designing a pediatric-to-adult care transition program for adolescents with sickle cell disease. In summer 2007, Smith traveled to Belize to serve as a health educator at PeaceWork Health Education Camps. He has volunteered at numerous hospitals, including the Duke Children’s Hospital, John Umstead State Psychiatric Hospital, and the University of Tennessee Trauma Center. At Duke, he served as co-president of the Learning through Experience, Action, Partnership, and Service (LEAPS) program, and as a crew leader for Project BUILD-a pre-orientation program for incoming freshmen that encourages volunteer work in Durham.

 

Corey Sobel

Corey Sobel

Corey Sobel, who graduated magna cum laude in May 2007 with a self-designed major in Writing Conflict: Reporting International and Ethnic Violence. A native of Potomac, Maryland, Sobel was a recipient of a full Division 1-A football scholarship and a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He currently works at the National Endowment for Democracy, where he serves as a research assistant to journalists and activists from the developing world pursuing research on democracy. At Duke, Sobel served as coordinator and co-leader of the Duke Human Rights Coalition and as president of Global Grasp, a community service and human rights organization. In summer 2006, he received $3,000 in Duke grants to write educational materials about HIV/AIDS for recently infected members of the Njoro and Nakuru communities in Kenya. Sobel interned at Duke Magazine and Esquire, and received creative writing awards for fiction and scriptwriting.

 

Sam Swartz

Sam Swartz

Sam Swartz, of Durham, North Carolina, who will graduate in May with a major in political science, a certificate in global health, and a minor in international comparative studies. Swartz was named the recipient of the new Hart Fellowship in Global Health. During the summer and fall of 2006, Swartz worked and lived in Bangsak, Thailand at the Rajaprajanugroh School 35, a residential school for children orphaned or victimized by the 2004 tsunami. Since May 2003, Swartz has worked as a part-time research assistant for McCorkle Policy Consulting, and currently volunteers for the Obama for America presidential campaign. In August 2007, he co-founded and currently co-chairs Duke’s Socioeconomic Diversity Working Group, and volunteers as a middle school tutor with Student U. Swartz has also served as a Big Brother in Durham’s Big Brother/Big Sister Organization, volunteered as an English literacy tutor for Duke campus support staff, and gutted flood-damaged homes in New Orleans. He is also a member of Phi Beta Kappa.

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