Although for many Duke undergraduates, summer plans often include ritzy internships or world travel, not many can boast of having crisscrossed Muhuru Bay in Kenya by bicycle with a translator in tow.
Thanks to funding from the pilot launch of DukeEngage, sophomore Lucy McKinstry did simply that-gathering data for a microfinancing survey while waorking for the Women's Institute of Secondary Education and Research, a Duke-created non-profit organization.
Although the $30-million service-learning initiative will not fully get underway until next year, approximately 90 undergraduates took on pilot projects this summer across five continents and 11 countries.
"[The pilot] was really to inform how we shaped the program," said DukeEngage Director Eric Mlyn. "We wanted to learn what works and what doesn't work and the best way to do that was to put students in the field."
Many students taking part worked on projects designed by Duke faculty and staff and said the pilots were different from other service-learning projects in which they had participated.
"It's not entirely difficult to find a volunteer program... but the thing that was different about this was that the group of Duke students that I was living and working with were just so incredibly passionate and motivated about what they were doing," said McKinistry, whose work will eventually help to finance and support the first girls' school in Muhuru Bay.
Similarly, senior Jenny Heffernan, who worked in an unpaid internship at the city of New Orleans health department, said she believes the project is exceptional in that it has enabled her to focus her studies on practical applications.
"I would very, very, very, strongly recommend this to everyone," she said. "I think the wonderful part of this experience is that, yeah, it can transform your life in general, but also your academic experience at Duke."
Other students designed projects geared toward their specific passions and interests.
Sophomore John Stokes independently secured an internship at La Fundación Huésped, a non-profit organization dealing with HIV and AIDS in Argentina, and was subsequently able to get funding from DukeEngage.
"It really was a full-fledged internship in Buenos Aires and I was doing all this work in a different language," said Stokes, who helped developed a guide for prevention and treatment. "I could actually see the results of what I was doing... and I felt like a valuable asset to the organization."
Despite the positive reviews from students, Mlyn said there is work to be done before the program can fully launch in the summer of next year.
"We face a host of challenges but nothing unanticipated," Mlyn said. "DukeEngage is not just a grant-it's a program. We are trying to build scaffolding around the DukeEngage program so we're able to maximize the experience."
Mlyn said the pilot experienced problems preparing students who had not been abroad or involved in service-learning because of the short time frame from DukeEngage's announcement in February.
The Duke Center for Civic Engagement, created as part of the DukeEngage initiative to coordinate civic-engagement and service-learning projects across the University, is currently working on programming that will best help to prepare students for their immersive service-learning projects and enhance participants' experiences by continued work in the field.
Officials have not yet decided how to structure the proposal for next year's DukeEngage projects, which Mlyn said he hopes will include more students.
Many participants, nevertheless, cited working for a worthy cause with like-minded individuals as the essential and most rewarding aspect of the program.
"The best part of the experience was being part of the greater rebuiliding effort at large," Heffernan said. "To have been a part of it... the enthusiasm, the optimism, the energy was inspiring."
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