Andy Cunningham’s call to action came three years ago when a Kenyan girl slipped a note under his door: “Andrew—the male teachers cane me unconditionally, the boys take my privates as their toys—get us out of this hell!”
Since then, Cunningham, Trinity ’08, has returned to Kenya as the executive director of the Women’s Institute of Secondary Education and Research, an educational non-governmental organization that he helped start while at Duke. The goal of WISER is to provide better secondary education conditions to young girls in Muhuru Bay, Kenya. Next year, he will study at the University of Oxford on a Marshall Scholarship, his reward for outstanding service and leadership.
“The note made me realize that each one of us holds the potential to make a huge impact in a short period of time, and that there was no need to wait for tomorrow, but to begin that day. Three years later, here I am,” Cunningham wrote in an e-mail.
The Marshall Scholarship is given out annually to no more than 40 students from the United States. It funds at least two years of graduate study in any field at any university in the United Kingdom.
“Andy was a natural to win the Marshall and Duke is very proud of his achievement. He and another student—both total strangers—came into my office some years back and gave a dazzling presentation on their work in Kenya, the original WISER. We’ve kept in close touch since then,” President Richard Brodhead wrote in an e-mail.
Cunningham said he wants to follow in the footsteps of former UNICEF Executive Director James Grant, who helped to change the lives of millions of children around the world with his education and health initiatives.
“Having had the opportunity to work with such an incredible team with WISER, I want to learn more opportunities to make a model of self-sustainable schools that equip and empower the next generation of leaders in our global village,” he said.
In addition to Cunningham’s Marshall Scholarship, 13 other Duke graduates will travel all over the globe to teach and do research as part of the Fulbright Program.
Karin Shapiro, a Fulbright fellow and Fulbright adviser for the Office of Undergraduate Scholars and Fellows, said the high number of winners reflects Duke’s commitments to interdisciplinarity, international programs like DukeEngage and Study Abroad.
Shapiro added that in her second year as an adviser, she was surprised by the breadth of the winners’ interests and the countries they focus their research on, which range from Brazil to Cambodia.
Lindsay Bayham, Trinity ’08, is a Fulbright scholar in Ghana. She is working with a small NGO that has a youth migration program. Her research will help design an online information portal for people around the world who are interested in traveling abroad. She was attracted to the award because it “extends beyond a research focus to emphasize deep engagement with people and institutions in your host country,” Bayham wrote in an e-mail.
In the future, Bayham would like to continue to combine research and advocacy in the areas of immigration and labor policy, migrants’ and human rights and open access to information, she added.
Duke has produced 19 Marshall and 39 Rhodes Scholars in its history. This year, however, no Duke student was selected to study at Oxford as a Rhodes scholar, but the number of competitive applicants for graduate academic scholarships is increasing, Melissa Malouf, director of the Office of Undergraduate Scholars and Fellows, wrote in an e-mail.
There has been a significant increase in the number of applicants for the Fulbright—55 students applied this year compared to 37 last year, Shapiro said. This indicates that there will be more winners in the future, she added.
“I’m not at all surprised that Duke has so many winners,” Brodhead said. “For a Fulbright you have to be smart, curious about the world and inventive about how you can engage cultures other than our own. That sounds like Duke to me.”
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