Academic All-Stars
Duke places three on USA Today list
Friday, February 9, 2001
"It's been a fantastic year," said Baugh, who is the co-president of the Duke Red Cross Club with Skotko. "I can't imagine a better finale than sharing it with two of the people who have had the most impact on my intellectual and moral development at Duke."
Currently, he is at work on his senior thesis gauging the effectiveness of a radio-based health education program he wrote, recorded and broadcast last summer in Haiti.
The 19 songs, which he wrote in Creole on prenatal care, breastfeeding, diarrhea and other topics, have been heard by about 70 percent of the island nation's 40,000-person broadcast audience. A number of health organizations working in Haiti have requested copies of Baugh's tapes after hearing a profile about him two months ago on National Public Radio. The songs and accompanying explanatory information are also slotted to be included in a new Creole translation of a book for health-care workers in rural and impoverished areas.
This summer, Baugh plans to work on humanitarian intervention issues for the National Security Council in Washington, D.C. He is bound for Oxford this fall to study under Adam Roberts, Britain's leading scholar on the politics of humanitarian intervention.
Skotko, who was also named a Faculty Scholar last May, is a biological anthropology and anatomy major from Strongsville, Ohio, with a minor in mathematics. He plans to attend medical school in the fall and continue his work with children who have disabilities.
One thing he said he will miss after graduation is his regular conversations with Kumar and Baugh on topics ranging from human nature and altruism to theology and politics.
"We all challenge each other's arguments with a healthy dose of criticism. You come to value that," Skotko said. "That's the best thing you could ask of a friend."
Kumar agreed. "We've talked about everything under the sun. It's been great," she said. "They challenge me to think further and not to simply accept the positions I took originally."
Skotko is looking forward to the publication this spring of his first book, Without a Doubt: Celebrating Life with Down Syndrome, a collection of stories, photographs and research featuring individuals with Down syndrome from across the country. He also completed a number of research projects on literacy in children with Rett syndrome, the anatomy of the mammalian tongue and a four-year study with an amnesic patient from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He also has volunteered at Duke Hospital's emergency room and with the Durham Special Olympics Program.
"I see the next phase of my life - medical school - as more of a beginning than an end," he said.
Kumar is a Program II major from Doylestown, Pa., who designed her own curriculum in health policy and social values, focusing on war's effect on health. She is applying to medical schools with the idea of one day working as a physician in the field of international health. Born in India, she also has lived with her family in Singapore, Indonesia and Canada.
As a high school senior, Kumar, traveled with her grandmother and brother to Calcutta to work in Mother Teresa's care facility. As a Duke junior, she did an independent study of the mid-1990s cholera outbreak among Rwandan refugees.
Last summer Kumar traveled to East Timor to conduct assessments for the Save the Children Federation. She helped to design a national maternal and child health program and delivered health services to street children.
"That really shaped the path I'm now on," Kumar said. "It opened my eyes to things I'd never thought of before."
A promising photographer, Kumar received a John Hope Franklin Student Award through Duke's Center for Documentary Studies to teach East Timorese street children to use cameras to describe their experiences before, during and after the violence. An exhibition of their work and her own photographs is scheduled to be held in the Center for Documentary Studies later this semester.
Kumar also has worked with pediatric patients at Duke Hospital, teaching them to use photography to express their views of illness and their own lives.
"Photography was just one of those things I always wanted to do in college," she said. "It's just become a wonderful, wonderful part of my life."
Other 2001 first-team winners came from Harvard, Princeton, Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Pennsylvania State, Belmont, Texas Christian, Kansas, Delaware, California-Irvine, Denison, West Virginia, Southern Utah, Alabama at Birmingham, Loyola, California-Riverside, Indiana and Carleton College.