Class of 2025 Honors: Exploring the Big Questions

“Black, White, and Green: Student Characteristics and Revenues Differences between UNC System Minority-Serving Institutions (MSIs) and Predominantly White Institutions (PWIs)”

My research was on social and economic mechanisms that affect minoritized racial and ethnic group members’ STEM major selections. Going to school in North Carolina was helpful for this project because there are many wonderful MSIs across the state. The UNC system, compared to other states, has a uniquely close balance regarding the number of PWIs and MSIs. The rich diversity of institution sizes, types, and backgrounds pushed me to examine the differences in student characteristics and revenue between these schools.

As I began writing this paper over a year ago, I thought about how higher education has become an increasingly inaccessible and polarized space. My research found that MSIs create an increasingly important space in terms of their greater levels of racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic diversity and in educating students in disciplines and classes that other schools don’t offer.

As we aim to make higher ed more accessible to all, we should be conscious of schools that are doing the work to expand access. It becomes even more important to consider how these institutions can be equitably supported through state appropriations.

One takeaway from my research was that schools should not always be measured by the same metrics, since our “typical” way of assessing learning might not be as inclusive as it should be. MSIs provide valuable contexts for belonging, which in turn allows more students to learn needed skills for the workforce and graduate school, reducing the workforce gap across the nation.

“Subluminal Messages,” a novel

I’ve spent my time at Duke thinking about the “design” of stories and poems, or how writers form language into literature. Creative writing has often been a place for me to try out my thinking—a way for me to see how different theories performed in practice and iterate on my understanding.

“Working on this project has been a highlight of my Duke experience. It’s taught me that the border between scientific and humanistic thinking is more porous than we often imagine — and that imagination sits at the core of all that we do in these fields.”

In my thesis, I am interested in exploring two threads related to what happens at the ends of communication stretched out due to time, technology, or distance. The first thinks through the implications of retelling stories, especially myths. The other thread is interested in what happens at the physical limits of communication: what happens when technology become inadequate (say, because distance becomes so vast that light-speed no longer means immediate), or when the delicate machinery that allows our contact gets disrupted? Working on this project has been a highlight of my Duke experience. It’s taught me that the border between scientific and humanistic thinking is more porous than we often imagine — and that imagination sits at the core of all that we do in these fields.