Alice Mao: Qualities of Generosity for Sullivan Award Winner

It's not unusual
for graduating senior Alice Mao to greet someone for the first time with a hug.
Treating everyone like friends comes naturally to the student winner of the
2011 Algernon Sydney Sullivan
Award, one of the university's top awards for community service.

The award
recognizes the qualities of generosity, service, integrity and deep
spirituality. It also recognizes nobility of character, which the Sullivan
Foundation defines as "when one goes outside the narrow circle of
self-interest and begins to spend oneself for the interests of humankind."

 "Nobility of character" fits Mao, according to Abbey
Bucher, a student who nominated the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship leader
for the Sullivan award.  Mao is a sincere
Christian who made friends of diverse backgrounds at Duke. She sought connections
with people of varying sexualities, genders, races and religions through experiences
such as Common Ground, a student-led retreat sponsored by the Center for Race
Relations.

"(Common Ground) showed me what it
means to really accept people, love them and learn from them," said Mao, a
biology major who plans to work next year for Americorps at a breast cancer
nonprofit before applying for medical school.  "Coming to Duke was really good and really challenging.
I came in wanting to explore my faith as well as to hold fast to my identity in
Christ since it's who I am. Meeting people who are so different challenged me
in thinking about my faith in so many ways."

Whereas most students are busy celebrating themselves on
their 21st birthdays, Mao used hers to ask fellow students to help
prepare a lunch to serve at the Durham Rescue Mission soup kitchen. 

"I'd been exploring with my friends
how to express that God is love," Mao said. "I thought, when in life
will I get to bring all your friends together to do exactly what I wanted to
do.

Lunch was at 11 a.m., but many still
came. Others opened their homes to cook hundreds of chicken drumsticks. "Next
time, I think I'm going to do casseroles," she said with a little laugh. "It
will be easier."

At Duke, Mao volunteered with Global
Medical Brigades, an organization
that supports medical mission trips to Honduras, and then successfully
encouraged that organization to take an interest in Latino youths in Durham.
Through DukeEngage, Mao, a Chinese native who was raised in the States, spent a
summer in Bejing working with migrant school children.

Mao said she fell in love with Duke the
first time she saw it, but her fondness for Durham developed over time.  It intensified her sophomore year when
she took the Durham Giving Project house course, in which students raise money
for local nonprofits.  She
subsequently applied for a chapel-sponsored Pathways internship and spent the
summer volunteering in Duke Hospital. Her work focused on HIV testing and included
attending community action meetings, which allowed her to connect with Durham
residents.  She visited racially
diverse churches. One in particular made her feel so at home that she kept
returning and said she experienced God there with a new found freedom.  

Not
content to take solely an extra-curricular approach to service, Mao also
grappled with civic engagement and ethical issues from an academic perspective.
She took courses from professors such as Peter Euben, a political science and
classical studies professor who specializes in ethics; David Malone, director of Duke's service-learning program;
and Sam Wells, dean of the chapel. Wells' "Ethics of an Unjust World"
challenged her to think honestly about one's motivations for civic engagement
and the importance of a humble, meaningful approach, she said.

Wells, in turn, had high praise for Mao: "Alice is one of the
most vigorous, thoughtful, and dedicated civically engaged students I've ever
met. She has boundless energy, and she uses it for so much good. She's an
inspiring person to be around."