An award-winning playwright, a medical anthropologist’s study of medical care in North Carolina and a student who is raising issues of housing insecurity in Durham were among the recipients of Faculty Scholars honors for 2020.
The Faculty Scholars Award is the only undergraduate scholarship award presented by university faculty that honors students whose record of independent work suggests great potential for innovative scholarship and a scholarly career.
This year, seven juniors were honored: Four were designated as Faculty Scholars with another three received honorable mention. Professor Kathy Nightingale, chair of the Faculty Scholars selection committee, said the unusually large number of winners was a result of the high-quality of nominations that came in this year from faculty members across the undergraduate program.
“The selected faculty scholars combine academic excellence and a passion for knowledge,” Nightingale said. “They span fields across the university, many of them including double majors with unique combinations. They demonstrate independence and creativity in their work and each holds great promise for scholarship and impact in advancing knowledge and affecting change in their respective fields and interests.”
This year’s winners are Kayla Corredera-Wells, an African & African American Studies and cultural anthropology major; Kevin Solomon, a political science major; Valerie Muensterman, an English major with minors in creative writing and theater studies; and Jay Zussman, a gender, sexuality and feminist studies and biophysics major.
Honorable mention went to Emre Cardakli, a neuroscience major; Jill Jones, a neuroscience and linguistics major; and Alexandru Damian, a mathematics and computer science major.
Corredera-Wells, a first-generation college student and a Rubenstein Scholar, will work this summer on her honor’s thesis doing ethnographic research in an emergency medical services program in North Carolina. Advised by Professor Harris Solomon, Corredera-Wells said she is interested in understanding the complex relationships between pain, empathy and identity in emergency care.
She is a trained paramedic and has worked in prehospital care for more than five years. “What comes to mind for most people when they think of EMS is a glamorous picture of treating gunshot wounds and pulling people out of burning buildings,” Corredera-Wells said. “But in reality, most of my time in the ambulance is spent treating non-critical patients whose illnesses are a product of overlapping spheres of marginalization. I treat homeless patients who need a bed to sleep in for the night, diabetic patients who can’t afford their insulin, psychiatric patients who need intensive inpatient therapy that simply isn’t available, and uninsured patients who are forced to use the 911 system and the ER in place of primary care. In short, EMS lays bare the myriad ways in which social inequality precipitates the physical destruction of human bodies.”
Recently named a Brodhead Fellow, Kevin Solomon has been involved with the Durham Community Land Trustees (DCLT) for about two years as both a volunteer and work-study student and has used that experience both as a scholarly pathway and as space for activism. In addition to work-study efforts with DCLT, he has explored re-entry housing policy for released prisoners in Durham and worked with Professor Kerry Haynie and State Sen. Floyd McKissick on racial, ethnic and other inequalities in local housing.
Solomon said his studies at Duke have been focused on the intersection between urban development and social justice. After graduation, he hopes to pursue graduate programs in public policy. “I want to move between academia and policy … to teach and write about the role and application of reconciliation in equitable development. Because scholarship and practice are mutually informing, I believe it’s imperative for a policymaker to consistently take the lessons learned and experience gained from academia to policy, and vice versa,” he said.
A University Scholar and winner of this year’s Beinecke Scholarship in the Arts, Muensterman is already an accomplished playwright. She is currently writing a full-length play, which will be directed next year. Muensterman also has been involved in the Duke Players as a director, actor, playwriting liaison and executive producer. And she has served as the director and creator of Duke Playhouse Shorts, a night of short play staged readings written, directed and produced entirely by students.
“Valerie’s one of the most impressive young writers I’ve ever had the good fortune to meet,” said Neal Bell, professor of the practice of theater studies. “She’s become a force for new theater at Duke, and an inspiration to her fellow students in the Duke Players organization, who’ve produced their best season in a number of years.”
An Angier B. Duke Scholar, Zussman has combined gender, sexuality and feminist studies with biophysics, a pairing that has allowed them to do scholarship that bridges the sciences and humanities. Zussman’s scientific work spans biophysics and cell biology to investigate the flexibility of biological membranes as well as force generation in oocytes during meiosis. Their work in the humanities interrogates that science through a queer theoretical lens, asking how cultural notions of sex, gender, and sexuality influence human reproductive biology research and fertility medicine. These studies in turn have prompted activism on campus and in the Durham community on issues such as sexual and domestic violence.
Throughout their studies, Zussman said they have been guided by advice from biology Professor David Sherwood, who has advised Zussman in their biology research. “Dr. Sherwood’s words in one of our first meetings have stuck with me: ‘the people I’ve seen make the deepest discoveries have been willing to observe without too many preconceived notions about what they’ll find. That patience is key, coupled with the desire to pursue answers to the tough questions that arise from looking closely,’” Zussman said.
The honorable mention winners also were recognized for creative scholarship and study.
Cardakli is doing original research on multiple sclerosis that is exploring an approach that might have a significant effect on the severity of the auto-immune disease.
Jones, who recently received a Goldwater Award, is doing research on male and female differences in pediatric brain tumors with the aim of therapies for each.
Damian is studying the mathematical foundations of machine learning.