Senior Jessica Van Meir has been named a Gates-Cambridge scholar, the University announced Thursday.
A public policy major with minors in psychology and gender, sexuality and feminist studies, Van Meir is one of 36 U.S. recipients from about 800 applications. The scholarship funds tuition and living expenses for scholars to complete a graduate degree at the University of Cambridge.
“It felt really nice to know what I'm doing next year,” she said about learning she had been selected. “It’s a really great honor.”
Next year, Van Meir—who is from Atlanta—plans to complete a master’s of philosophy program in development studies. She then hopes to work for the federal government in the State Department in diplomacy or civil service, she noted.
The Gates-Cambridge Scholarship program—which was established in 2000 with a grant of $210 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation—selects recipients based on their potential for leadership and commitment to improving the lives of others.
At Duke, Van Meir has been an advocate for sexual assault prevention. After taking the class “Telling Stories for Social Change: Confronting Sexual and Domestic Violence at Duke and in Durham,” she created the club We Are Here Duke which works to address gender violence. She has also been a member of the Sexual Misconduct Task Force.
This year, she founded a group called Duke Students Against Gender Violence, which facilitates collaboration between the many groups on campus that work to prevent gender violence.
“There were a lot of groups working on these issues but not a lot of collaboration,” she said. “We have been trying to increase communication between student groups on the issue.”
Van Meir also helped draft a letter of policy recommendations that was presented to the Sexual Misconduct Task Force and led to the creation of a new position at Duke for Title IX outreach and response. That position is now held by Victoria Krebs.
She said her passion for addressing gender violence on campus stems from her experiences with a friend who was sexually assaulted during their first year and had a hard time with the reporting process at the University.
“I wanted to work on addressing problems that she had encountered in the process and making it easier for sexual assault survivors to report,” Van Meir said.
Van Meir has also interned with Project Transgender in Quito, Ecuador and participated in a DukeEngage independent project with ZanaAfrica in Nairobi, Kenya.
In addition, she worked as a research assistant for Judith Kelley, Kevin D. Gorter professor of public policy, to study how the U.S. influences global human trafficking policies. She noted that Kelley has had a great impact on her time at Duke.
“She’s been an incredible mentor to me and the first person at Duke who made me feel like my work mattered to someone,” Van Meir said.
She also credited her professors in her “Telling Stories for Social Change Class”—Lynden Harris, who founded a local storytelling organization called Hidden Voices, and Madeleine Lambert, Trinity '08 and a professional actress—as being supportive of her efforts.
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