Elisabeth "Lisette" Yorke has conducted AIDS research in Thailand and Cambodia, been inducted into Phi Beta Kappa and started a women's ice hockey club.
Now, these and other accomplishments, both academic and extracurricular, have led to a Rhodes Scholarship for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill senior.
Saturday, (Nov. 29), she was one of just 11 Rhodes Scholars that are chosen nationwide each year in Canada. The award will take the biology major to England for two to three years of study at Oxford University.
Elisabeth "Lisette" Yorke has conducted AIDS research in Thailand and Cambodia, been inducted into Phi Beta Kappa and started a women's ice hockey club.
Now, these and other accomplishments, both academic and extracurricular, have led to a Rhodes Scholarship for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill senior.
Saturday, (Nov. 29), she was one of just 11 Rhodes Scholars that are chosen nationwide each year in Canada. The award will take the biology major to England for two to three years of study at Oxford University.
The daughter of Charles and Elisabeth Yorke of Hillside Boularderie, Nova Scotia, Yorke is the second Rhodes Scholar from Carolina named this year. Her success follows that of Cary senior Aisha Saad, chosen as one of 32 U.S. Rhodes Scholars on Nov. 22. Saad is majoring in environmental health sciences in the Gillings School of Global Public Health at UNC and in Spanish in the College of Arts and Sciences.
Worldwide, about 85 Rhodes Scholars are selected annually in 14 jurisdictions. The scholarship funds tuition, fees and living expenses for two years, plus a third year at Oxford if needed for the degree desired. Its value averages $50,000 per year and varies with each student’s course of study.
Yorke will seek a master's degree in immunology at Oxford, focusing on HIV-related processes. Afterward, she hopes to earn a medical degree. "As I look to my future, I see myself as a passionate advocate for people living with HIV and a catalyst in ending the HIV/AIDS pandemic," she said.
Yorke is the 43rd Rhodes Scholar from Carolina since the Rhodes program began in 1904 and the eighth in the last seven years. She has a Morehead-Cain Scholarship, a merit award funding all four undergraduate years and four summer enrichment experiences. Of 28 Rhodes Scholars from UNC since the first Morehead-Cains graduated in 1957, 25, counting Yorke, have been Morehead-Cain Scholars.
Other U.S. universities with two Rhodes Scholars this year are Harvard, Northwestern, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of California, Los Angeles.
"I’ve come to know Lisette through her service on the student advisory committee to the chancellor," said Chancellor Holden Thorp. "Her keen mind and passion to make the world a better place are apparent to all who know her. I have no doubt that this well deserved honor will speed her on toward realizing her lofty goals."
Yorke, who graduated from Memorial Composite High School in Sydney Mines, Nova Scotia, in 2005, studies in UNC's College of Arts and Sciences . She is writing an honors thesis on molecular biology and immunology. She was chosen by the Carolina Forensics Association to compete in national debate tournaments. She also was selected for the N.C. Fellows Leadership Program, a four-year leadership development experience.
Her Canadian honors include a Queen Elizabeth II Medal for superior academic performance and outstanding extracurricular and community involvement and a Lieutenant Governor General of Nova Scotia Medal for most outstanding 11th-grade student. She was one of 12 Canadian Merit Scholarship Foundation recipients and one of 100 Canadian Millennium Excellence Award recipients nationwide.
Arriving in Chapel Hill, Yorke was disappointed to find no women’s ice hockey team at UNC. She made the women's varsity rowing team and played on the men’s ice hockey team for two years. Then she petitioned UNC sports directors and administrators to start a women's ice hockey club, which now is in its second year and seeks to increase interest in ice hockey among women.
Yorke's shots on goal haven’t kept her from volunteering for community service. She periodically serves breakfast in a local homeless shelter and has tutored elementary school children. "For the past three years, I have volunteered three to four hours each week at the UNC Hospitals Jaycee Burn Center, visiting with injured and disfigured patients to provide a valuable distraction from their often severe pain," she said.
In one of her Morehead-Cain summer experiences, Yorke volunteered in a Rwandan hospital, teaching English to workers, involved in activities ranging from surgery to childbirth. She befriended a Rwandan teen who was HIV-infected, orphaned by parents who had died of HIV/AIDS and caring for her younger brother and sister. Yorke spent $12 for a goat for her friend that would help supply income for the family.
"I was so touched by her response that I organized 11 more goat donations to HIV/AIDS-affected families in Rwanda," Yorke said. Outside her daily hospital duties, Yorke interviewed HIV-positive adults and families with malnourished children about their challenges in receiving care. She presented her findings to hospital health-care staff and returned to Chapel Hill determined to help solve the riddles of HIV/AIDS.
"I left Rwanda with a commitment to the genocide survivors, AIDS victims and impoverished children who had given me a view into their lives," she said. "I was bringing back their story and the experiences they shared with me to UNC." Yorke said she wished "to make more people aware of the hardships and situations that other people have to live with in other parts of the world. It’s nothing like what we could imagine in Western culture."
She’d like to return to Rwanda someday as a volunteer, perhaps with Doctors Without Borders . "I know that I’ve been very fortunate in my experiences in life," she said. "I would like to be in a role that could pay some of this back to the global community."
Note: Yorke can be reached at lisette.yorke@gmail.com
Office of Distinguished Scholarships contact: George Lensing, (919) 260-6302
News Services contact: LJ Toler, (919) 962-8589