April 8, 2008
Three students tapped for coveted Udall scholarships
Carrie Johnson, Casey Roe, and Drew Veysey are this years winners of Morris K. Udall Foundation scholarships. (Photo by Jeff Watts)
For a university to have three winners of Morris K. Udall Scholarships is impressive. Only three schools achieved that distinction this year. But for AU, it was a repeat. This was the second year in a row that AU students captured three of the coveted awards, which are given to students viewed as future leaders.
Udall scholarships are $5,000 merit scholarships awarded to sophomores and juniors who are committed to careers in the environment or Native American health care and tribal public policy. The AU students tapped for the awards are young activists and scholars who have already compiled an impressive track record.
This was the second year that Casey Roe ’09 landed the honor. As a high school student in New Hampshire, she had watched in dismay as the fields and orchards of her small town began to disappear into subdivisions.
“I grew up in the woods,” she says. “My mom raised us to always be outdoors. We were always hiking and camping and cross-country skiing.” Her love of nature turned her into a fighter for environmental causes in high school. Now a junior in Environmental Studies, College of Arts and Sciences, “she is just amazingly active,” says Joan Echols of the Career Center.
Roe has been policy director for AU’s student group Eco-Sense for nearly three years, was instrumental in the university’s clean transportation initiative, and has interned at such organizations and agencies as the Sierra Club and Environmental Protection Agency.
For Carrie Johnson ’08, it was coming to AU, far from her native South Dakota, that crystallized her passion for Native American affairs. Johnson’s parents and grandfather had worked for the Indian Health Service, and she has two Native American aunts, so she had always been conscious of the poverty, health challenges, and educational disparities faced by so many Native Americans.
But when she arrived at AU, she found that most students, growing up far from reservations, knew little about these issues. So she led an alternative break to Pine Ridge Reservation last year, helped organize other trips, headed up an awareness-raising student group called Student Advocates for Native Communities, and won a $2,500 university research grant to study academic achievement this summer among Native American students in South Dakota.
She found a mentor in Professor Meg Weekes, School of Public Affairs, who shares an interest in Native American issues, and was helped as well by Jack Soto, director of the Washington Internships for Native Students (WINS).
Johnson, who is also a Truman finalist, plans to go to law school.
It was fly fishing that gave Drew Veysey ’10 his concern for freshwater aquatic systems. He learned the sport from his grandfather, and it led him into an awareness of the natural world that has translated into a major in environmental studies and political science. The sophomore from Ames, Iowa, has worked with his state’s Department of Natural Resources, is active with Eco-Sense, and hopes to return to Iowa in an environmental policy role.“It’s a distinction to win as a sophomore,” Echols notes.
All three winners are in the University Honors Program.
