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The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s spring Commencement is Sunday, May 8, at 9:30 a.m. in Kenan Stadium.

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s spring Commencement is Sunday, May 8, at 9:30 a.m. in Kenan Stadium.

Following are human interest story ideas connected to the ceremony, with contact information for pursuing each one. Local angles are in bold.

Kenan Music Scholar to sing national anthem

Five years ago, Lauren Schultes was visiting Southern colleges, wanting to experience a different region than her home in Grosse Pointe, Mich., when she arrived at Carolina.

“I set foot on this campus and just fell in love with it,” she said. “The Old Well, the upper quad…” But as an out-of-state student, she could not afford UNC – not until the Kenan Music Scholarships came along. Schultes applied, auditioned and was selected.

Now the accomplished soprano has been chosen to sing “The Star-Spangled Banner” at her own Commencement ceremony, Sunday in Kenan Stadium.

“That’s really going to be, oh my gosh, just the most amazing moment of my whole college career,” Schultes said. “My purpose is to share music, so to share this with my classmates and their families is such an honor for me, and such an exciting opportunity.”

She is one of the first four Kenan Music Scholars to graduate. The first Kenan Music Scholars, including Schultes, enrolled in fall 2007, so 2010-2011 marked the first year UNC had the scholars in all four undergraduate classes, with 15 studying on campus.

A $4 million endowment created by the William R. Kenan, Jr. Charitable Trust funds the merit awards, which cover tuition, fees, room and board for all four years of college. The scholarship also provides for study abroad, work with particular performers, internships with elite music groups and more.

“The scholarship meant everything to me and my family,” she said. “Just the chance that I would be able to come to Carolina opened so many doors for me. “Once I got to know the music faculty I knew this was the place for me,” Schultes said. “They’re with you every step as you’re growing as a person and a musician.”

Besides music, in the College of Arts and Sciences, she majored in business administration in Kenan-Flagler Business School. Business skills helped her get a job in Minneapolis, a city she said is overflows with arts opportunities.

Schultes has sung the anthem at many Carolina games, from baseball to wrestling to women’s basketball. But Sunday will be different: “I usually sing it a cappella, so being with the Tar Heel band is going to be a little new for me. But I think it’s going to come out great, feeling that oneness with the band and the crowd in Kenan Stadium.”

Schultes can be reached at (313) 402-9592 or lms11@email.unc.edu. To download a photo, see http://uncnews.unc.edu/images/stories/news/students/2011/schultes.l.1.jpg.

First-generation graduate plans to mentor younger cousins

Brittany Murphy taught herself to read at age 3 with “Hooked on Phonics.” “I’ve always wanted to learn more and know more and know how things work,” said the first-generation college student.

The daughter of factory workers, Murphy, of Asheboro, got financial aid and took on loans to get through UNC, majoring in English in the College of Arts and Sciences: “There are some really amazing professors in the English department. Though some of the texts are hundreds of years old, they make it sound like it was written yesterday.”

She said much the same of her creative writing professors. She’s written for the Blue and White, The Daily Tar Heel and other student publications. She campaigned for Hillary Clinton and later Barack Obama and interned at Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill.

“I found out that I really love publicity,” she said. She plans to move to her father’s in Memphis and seek work in sports marketing, combining her love of words with her passion for athletics. And her younger cousins may as well get ready to be mentored.

“It makes me feel really good that I can be a role model for my cousins and say ‘Even though your parents didn’t go to college, you can do it.”

She plans to participate in the Graduation Recognition and Pinning Ceremony for first-generation students, at 10 a.m. Saturday (May 7) in the rotunda of the Morehead Building. Supporters will attach Carolina Firsts pins to the students’ gowns. Then it’s Kenan on Sunday and off to take on the world – and pay back those loans.

“That won’t be fun, but my experience at Carolina has been really really incredible,” Murphy said. “While I’m mailing off those checks, I can think about the national championship we won.”

Murphy can be reached at (336) 953-8763 or murphyb@email.unc.edu., for print interviews only.

Note: Nearly 20 percent of UNC undergraduates are the first in their families to go to college. This month, an estimated 700 of them will graduate. Carolina offers numerous resources and services to help all students succeed. Visit http://firstgeneration.unc.edu/ for more information.

Student perseveres 36 years to complete degree

In 1974, Hal Mekeel (mi-KEEL) was 23 and a journeyman printer at the newspaper in his native Newburgh, N.Y. The printing trade was being computerized, so Mekeel began taking night classes at nearby Orange County Community College.

“Two years later, a labor dispute left me unemployed,” he said. So he enrolled in the college full time learning to operate electron microscopes. In 1978, someone at Harvard Medical School called Mekeel’s professor looking for an electron microscope technician. Mekeel got the job and left college before his last semester.

In Massachusetts, he took classes at Northeastern University and Harvard. But in 1987, his family moved to Chapel Hill because a doctor here specialized in a condition affecting Mekeel’s son.

Mekeel began work with electron microscopes at the School of Medicine, taking eight years off from college before venturing into a few UNC classes. Tuition waivers for employees and his department’s flexibility allowed Mekeel to take the classes.

“In 2006, my wife and son conspired to convince me to focus on a degree.” Mekeel, deciding on a bachelor’s degree in history, went to the William and Ida Friday Center for Continuing Education and wound up with academic adviser Jennie Brooks.

“She figured out what I needed to do to get my degree and put together this patchwork education that I had,” he said. “Whenever I hit a roadblock I would call her. I don’t think I could have done this without her.”

In 2009, with graduation one class away, Mekeel developed Guillain-Barré syndrome, a serious condition that causes paralysis and exhaustion. His wife, a nurse, helped him cope. “I could get around with a walker, but I could not have passed a sobriety test,” he joked.

Finally able to reenroll last January, Mekeel, at 59, will finally get his degree Sunday 36 years after his first enrollment. He has a 3.7 GPA. “Without the Friday Center and continuing education, a bachelor’s degree would have been out of the question,” he said.

Said Brooks:
“He has weathered the transition to online registration, the change in course numbers, the revised curriculum and the advent of ConnectCarolina (a computerized system managing student services), all with amused resignation and a wry smile. Throughout, he has maintained an outstanding academic record.”

Mekeel can be reached at (919) 966-6868, (919) 240-4624 or Mekeel@med.unc.edu.

Music major marches to different drummer

Ben Fuller of Charlotte plays classical trumpet. But unlike most music majors, he’s not dreaming of Carnegie Hall or the great concert venues of Europe.

Fuller, who studies in the College of Arts and Sciences, wants to start an orchestra in his hometown for disadvantaged children, and he has earned a merit award to learn how to do so at the New England Conservatory of Music.

The one-year Abreu Fellowship, starting in August, will include a two- to three-month internship in Venezuela, where the model for such kids’ orchestras, El Sistema, originated. Already, Fuller has worked with kids’ orchestras in Glasgow, Scotland, and in Durham with the group Kidznotes. In fact, an Abreu Fellow started Kidznotes.

Fuller has had some exceptional mentoring at Carolina Performing Arts, he said, having interned there this semester and taken an independent study fall semester with Emil Kang, executive director for the arts, who “really took me under his wing. Everyone at CPA has done a lot for me, and my trumpet professor, Jim Ketch, has been very supportive and encouraging, writing me all kinds of recommendations.”

Fuller said an orchestra gives kids an alternative to realities they may face elsewhere, and they have an alternative to getting into trouble after school. Ideally, through music, “they can help themselves despite the manifestations of poverty.”

He’s seen changes in the kids. Shy ones have found a voice. Over-exuberant kids have found focus. They have a support network; they learn to play as a team.

Fuller considers himself the lucky one: “When I got to Scotland and saw the effect that music was having on these kids I never had to think about what I wanted to do again. It was very obvious for me.”

Fuller has been in the orchestra and on the dean’s list all three of his years at Carolina (he transferred from Northwestern after his first year) and will graduate in Kenan on Sunday (May 8) with highest honors and distinction. He can be reached at (704) 877-0206 or btfuller22@gmail.com.

Triplets time birth during last year of med school

Grand Rapids, Mich., native Stacie Adams and her husband decided to get pregnant just before her last year of medical school at Carolina. Contrary to conventional wisdom, “we get more time off in the fourth year, and it would be the most time I’d ever have for maternity leave,” she said.

They succeeded in August. But when she had her first ultrasound, she heard three little heartbeats. One set of identical twins and one fraternal twin.

“I started laughing so hard that I started crying, and then I said, ‘I think I need to call my husband.’” His response? “He started laughing, too, and just said, ‘Well, here we go!’”

So Adams scheduled all her fourth-year rotations early, intending to finish in January. And instead of interviewing for residencies later, as usual, she tried to squeeze them in during the rotations. That way she could have time off when she was due in April.

So, while carrying triplets, she completed school work and flew coast to coast for interviews. In Houston at 20 weeks, she started feeling miserable. “I noticed that my belly was looking REALLY big all of a sudden.” After a long, tiring day of interviews and clinical simulations, she flew home and went to the doctor the next morning.

A serious condition threatening the identical twins was discovered. Adams and her husband drove to the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital for a specialized fetal surgery. Doctors there said triplet three was in the way of an operation on the first two. But an MRI showed them a way around the problem, and surgery in December succeeded.

Adams soon found herself back in Durham, restricted to bed rest. She missed two rotations but made up for those in part with written work she completed in bed.

On March 8, Avery, Grant and Lucas weighed in at 3 pounds 10 ounces, 3 pounds 11 ounces and 4 pounds six ounces, respectively. They went to neo-natal intensive care, but all was well with mother and babies. The last one to come home arrived late in April, about the time that Adams completed all the work she had missed.

If things go as planned, the tiny trio will be at Memorial Hall Saturday (May 7) before Mom’s graduation from medical school at 10 a.m. Graduates will line up at 9:30 a.m.

Note: Adams will not march in Sunday’s overall Commencement ceremony in Kenan. She can be reached at (919) 724-7583 or Stacie_adams@med.unc.edu.

Rare disorder fails to derail degree

In September 2008, in what was supposed to be Chelsea Smith’s junior year, she developed a strange pain in her hip. By the end of the week, it had spread to her back and other hip. It was excruciating. She could not get out of bed.

Smith withdrew from UNC and moved to her parents’ in Asheville, where she had graduated from Asheville High. After six months of bed rest and seeing doctors who did not know what was wrong, she finally got a diagnosis: hypermobility syndrome, a rare and painful disorder in which joints move beyond their normal range.

She took two semesters off, learning to live with lots of physical therapy, medicines for pain – and for side effects on the heart and gastro-intestinal system – and some doctors telling her that college wouldn’t be possible for her.

But Smith came back to Carolina in fall 2009, living off campus and using her gas-powered scooter, which could get her right up to the doors of her classroom buildings. She struggled, but she walked the rest of the way. She also took courses online.

Smith has done research and writing for an exhibit opening next month at the Airborne and Special Operations Museum in Fayetteville, where her parents have moved. She wants to expand her blog into a website on hypermobility syndrome in hopes that others won’t have to suffer as she did for so long without a diagnosis.

Now, only one year late, Smith will graduate Sunday with a degree in history and a minor in Hispanic studies in the College of Arts and Sciences. She’ll await the processional in a chair full of pillows instead of standing, and then walk into Kenan with the other students.

“Disability Services has been great since I first started having problems,” Smith said. “They’re incredibly nice and really accommodating, helping me figure out how to make things work for me.

“To be able to achieve this despite all the physical problems means so much to me. To still be able to complete on this level feels really good.”
Smith can be reached at (828) 702-1002, elsesmith@gmail.com  or scchelse@email.unc.edu. Visit her blog at www.hypermobilityhope.blogspot.com.

Covenant Scholar discovers her passion at Carolina

Victoria Wilburn of Hun
tington, W.Va.,
graduated from Huntington High School with highest honors. She applied to Carolina, but numerous other colleges were recruiting her for basketball and track. She starred in those sports in high school. Then her mother brought her to a UNC orientation program.

The next thing she knew, Wilburn was admitted as a Carolina Covenant Scholar. For any student whose family income isn’t more than 200 percent of the poverty level, the Covenant promises that the student will be able to graduate debt-free through a combination of grants, private donations and work-study jobs.

Wilburn will graduate Sunday and has been admitted to the University of Southern California to seek a master’s degree in critical studies cinema.

She believes that with an athletic scholarship, she would have focused on practices and pressure to perform rather than her studies. Her mom, a single parent and a Head Start teacher for 24 years, instilled in her a love of learning.

Her mom, also named Victoria Wilburn, taught her the alphabet when she was between 1 and 2 years old. With sights set on college for her daughter, Wilburn got her involved in athletics.

“She was just trying to give me as many options as possible,” the younger Wilburn said. “But she always said academics were first and athletics were a plus. She would not let me go to practices until my homework was done. She said, ‘If you are intelligent and you know how to critically think, you’ll be fine.’”

When she accidentally took the wrong course, on video production, in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Wilburn became so involved in an assignment that she accidentally pulled an all-nighter. The next day, Francesca Carpentier, an assistant professor in the school, came in and said, “Victoria, have you been here all night?”

“She was composing what I thought was a creative documentary,” said Carpentier. “I said that if she wanted to pursue a filmmaking style that did not necessarily have a news feel, she would learn more about these different styles in communication studies in the College of Arts and Sciences.”

Said Wilburn: “At that moment I went to Bingham (Hall) and changed my major.”

She’s been in her element ever since, going to conferences, finding mentors, working internships and winning awards. She also was accepted for graduate school at New York and Florida State universities but chose USC.

Sunday, the elder Victoria Wilburn will have the Mother’s Day of her life, seeing her daughter graduate from Carolina. It will be a welcome change for her, having lost her job in November and had her house burn two years ago. She’s living out of four of its eight rooms.

“It’s good to know that I’ll be making my mom proud,” said the younger Wilburn. “She is my motivation for doing whatever I do well.”

Wilburn can be reached at (919) 370-1881 or vwilburn@email.unc.edu. For more on the Carolina Covenant, visit http://www.unc.edu/carolinacovenant/.

Tragedy turns multitalented student to medicine

It would be quicker to list things that Bradley King cannot do.

He has won contests for his photography and worked as a newspaper photographer in his hometown, Hickory. He’s been a disc jockey, a webmaster and an emergency medical technician; learned to speak Spanish; volunteered in a Carolina student-run medical clinic for low-income residents; worked to improve women’s health in Honduras; installed computer hardware and software; and, for a research project, collected hog waste.

“It was a lot of fun,” he said. “It was my introduction to real experimental science and the scientific method.”

Now, he’s graduating from the School of Medicine, hoping to become an eye surgeon. Next year he’ll be an internal medicine intern, then an ophthalmology resident for three years, both at UNC. He commutes to campus on his bicycle.

King and his wife, Martha, who both had worked for Habitat for Humanity, started building their house in Chapel Hill in time, they thought, to finish before he started medical school. He was taking prerequisites; she was working toward a master’s degree in folklore, also at Carolina.

But weather and bureaucratic hold-ups played their usual tricks, sending King into his first year of medical school with a house to finish building. And he was still on the South Orange Rescue Squad. That was fall 2005.

“There were some late nights, and I probably fell asleep during class a couple of times,” he said. “We had to hire some things out (for the house) that we were planning to do ourselves.”

But friends pitched in, and the Kings moved into their new house in January 2006.

Growing up, King planned to become a photographer. That changed 10 years ago. His father, a doctor, was on an Angel Flight crew – a team that flies patients and families to treatment facilities – when his plane went down.

“His life as a well loved physician was evident as close to 1,000 people in our small hometown streamed out to pay respects during the weekend of his funeral,” King said. The tragedy made him ponder how he could bring positive change to the lives of others.

Last year he took a leave of absence from medical school to earn a master’s degree in the Gillings School of Global Public Health.

Now the Kings have a daughter, 2, and another child on the way. Martha King is working on her doctorate in anthropology at UNC. Whatever will Bradley King do with his time?

“I’m building a tree house for my daughter.”

Note: King will not be at the overall graduation in Kenan on Sunday. He does plan to participate in the medical school ceremony at 10 a.m. Saturday in Memorial Hall. The processional will line up at 9:30 a.m. To reach him, call (919) 636-0445 or e-mail bradley_king@med.unc.edu. For a photo of the Kings with their new house, visit http://uncnews.unc.edu/images/stories/news/students/2011/img_1065.jpg. House during construction: http://uncnews.unc.edu/images/stories/news/students/2011/p1060055.jpg

Multiple moves make degree take 15 years

After 15 years, four cities in far-flung corners of the world and five colleges, Hamady Mbaye (ha-MAH-dee m-BEYE) will finally get his undergraduate degree at Carolina on Sunday.
“My father is a teacher, and my parents really taught us to have a curiosity for learning,” he said. “They always encouraged me to continue with my studies no matter what situation I was facing.”

He began college in his native Senegal in 1996. Two years later, his father received a Fulbright Fellowship to teach in Guam, an island and U.S. territory in the Pacific, and off they went. Mbaye changed colleges and majors.

The next year, his father got a teaching job in Baltimore, and the family moved again. Mbaye ventured to New York City and enrolled in Manhattan Community College. But 9/11 damaged the school, and it had to close for a time. Mbaye began running a business for a friend in Queens, but after several years, felt pulled to return to school. He enrolled in the City College of New York, continuing to work part time.

Mbaye was on track to graduate from CUNY when his wife, Leann Bankoski, accepted a job at UNC directing C
arolina for Kibera, a community development organization working in the slum of Kibera, Kenya. The organization is part of the Center for Global Initiatives at UNC, so the couple moved to Chapel Hill.

“Sometimes I think about all the credits that I lost in all those school transfers and I get frustrated, but what I gained in meeting so many interesting people and taking classes from good professors in so many different institutions has really made up for it,” said Mbaye, now 34, who majored in global studies with a concentration in international politics and African studies, all in the College of Arts and Sciences.

Mbaye became the first Carolina undergraduate to receive a Foreign Language and Area Studies grant from the U.S. Department of Education – an award for graduate students only until last year. It funded his senior year at UNC and a stay in Morocco last summer to study Arabic – his sixth language.

“Moving so many times and adjusting to different cultures was challenging at times, but I’ve learned so much,” he said. “Looking back, I can’t imagine it any other way. I’ve travelled a long way for this, and I can’t wait to walk into Kenan Stadium for Commencement. It will all be worth it.”

Mbaye can be reached at (646) 548-6904 or hamadymbaye@gmail.com.

News Services contact: LJ Toler, (919) 962-8589

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