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From California to Carolina, Adam wants to give every community the health care they deserve.
Incoming first-year Adam Sherif spent his high school years creating a community for his fellow students and making health care more accessible for residents in his hometown of Sacramento, California.
Now, he’s looking forward to bringing that work to Carolina.
There’s a strong emphasis on community service at Carolina, and you can see how the students are creating real changes in their community and around the world. I don’t want to come to school just to study and get good grades. I want to make a difference while I’m doing it.
Sherif’s drive to serve began at his private Catholic school, where he felt disconnected from his culture as an Egyptian and Muslim. He says joining the Black Student Union was the turning point when he began to think about service and belonging.
“I joined the Black Student Union during my sophomore year, and I started reading and noticing the hardships we were experiencing as a community,” Sherif says.
That led him to found the Arab/Muslim Student Union to further serve students in his school who felt they didn’t fit into other communities.
“It can be hard to feel like the odd man out, so having a group to identify with was important to me,” says Sherif, who served as the organization’s president. “We also used the unions as a space to talk about different perspectives and hear from each other.”
When the pandemic began during Sherif’s sophomore year, he started searching for an opportunity to extend his service beyond his high school to help the Bay Area community. His mission was motivated by his father, an emergency room physician, who was on the front line of the response.
“My father would come home from the ER and have stories of the suffering observed before vaccines were available,” Sherif says. “The pandemic put a pause on a lot of our high school activities, but I started asking around about how I could contribute.”
His high school organized a vaccine clinic, and despite its success, Sherif felt they weren’t reaching those who truly needed assistance.
“Although the vaccine clinic at my school was successful, I looked at the line of cars and saw people driving Mercedes and Teslas, and I realized to really make a difference, I needed to go into the community,” Sherif says.
Working alongside school board member Dr. Kawanaa Carter, Sherif helped organize another vaccine clinic, this time focused on underserved populations in his area. He directed traffic in the pop-up drive-thru clinics, handed out paperwork, input data, filled out vaccine cards and recruited his classmates to join in the effort. The clinic vaccinated almost 30,000 people in eight months and held clinics in public spaces within the community to ensure accessibility.
Volunteering with the clinic solidified Sherif’s interest in health care, and he chose to attend Carolina to pursue a career in public health.
I want to study health disparities and how we can address them. COVID was a reality check for most of us that these communities have been hurting for so long, and it was only amplified during the pandemic.
The University’s focus on service appealed to Sherif, who wants to continue to contribute to ending health inequality. Carolina also stood out to Sherif because his father has been a fan of the University since he immigrated to the United States after attending medical school in Egypt.
“My father went to a seminar in Chapel Hill while he was a resident, and he absolutely loved the school, and especially the basketball team,” Sherif says.
Although he’ll have to wait a few months to attend his first basketball game as a student, Sherif is looking forward to his first day on campus and meeting his roommate, an international student from Nepal.
“I’ve never lived anywhere except California, so I’m looking forward to coming to Chapel Hill and working, living and studying beside my classmates from all over the world and learning from them,” Sherif says.
Story courtesy of UNC.edu.
When Mary Grace was in her late teens, a four-year college was out of reach. Roadblocks to higher education were everywhere.
“It was the ’70s, and we couldn’t figure out the money or the path,” she said. “I was one of eight children, and I had to make my way. In my world, a young woman would not often be seen as someone with those possibilities.”
Grace, who is now 64, grew up in a family with strong faith, which led to a heart for service. She also developed a deep commitment to social justice. As she followed those callings, she found a lifetime of education. She’s been an activist, a mother, a teacher, a student and a world traveler.
And, now, she’s a Carolina student.
When I get to campus, I’ll have a button on my backpack that says: ‘I’m old and learning new stuff.’
And, the student body might learn a thing or two from her.
After earning an associate’s degree in physical therapy in 1976, Grace joined the United Farmworkers Union to work in Washington, D.C., and California as an organizer.
“That was all such an education – in American history and labor, Chicano history, agricultural and immigration disparities, and diversity. I saw it all just because I said ‘yes’ to this life. This context of living history was fascinating. We were working so hard to make real what most of us say we believe in – peace and justice.”
Grace met her husband, Sebastian, when he successfully represented her after she was illegally arrested for free speech outside the Pentagon. Sebastian also took a different First Amendment case to the Supreme Court after Grace and a friend had been threatened with arrest. In 1983, they won United States v. Grace, which struck down a federal statute prohibiting picketing and the distribution of leaflets on the public sidewalks surrounding the Supreme Court.
Grace continued her work in activism, visiting Iraq to observe nonviolent conflict resolution in a war zone and teaching English in South Sudan. She later returned to South Sudan to volunteer with a women’s fair-trade cooperative and helped organize a conversation with administrators and educators on public schooling in South Sudan, specifically integrating alternatives to violence and war.
“I’ve had all these adventures. One adventure after the other. I’m ready for more.”
Four years ago, Sebastian was diagnosed with cardiac amyloidosis, a chronic condition. They moved to Durham so he could be treated at Duke University, and so they could be closer to their children, who are both high school teachers in Durham, and their grandchildren.
Grace just completed her second associate degree at Durham Technical Community College, where she received numerous awards. When it was time to transfer to a university, she had her choice of a number of top schools.
She found herself drawn to Carolina, she said, “because the staff were exceptionally engaging, affirming, and exceedingly helpful in all interactions.”
She said that Carolina has the vital combination of professional knowledge and skills with personal interest and connection. She is excited about using the interdisciplinary studies major to craft her own education, as she’s done for so long.
“I plan to create my own major around studying trauma and resilience, with a likely minor in conflict resolution. Because of what I’ve seen across the world, and what I know now about science and health, I’m really interested in adverse childhood experiences and how they affect the body itself – the ability to think and learn and heal. I need to study more and use what I learn to continue to be more helpful to my community. We experience what I see as very stressful times in our world, and healing connections with each other are key. “
Grace will start this fall with Carolina Away, a program for first-year and transfer students that will allow her to take her courses online and participate in small-group experiences with classmates, faculty, and staff.
Over the summer, she’s kept her eye on the kinds of opportunities Carolina is offering for students and alumni to engage in discourse around racism, equality, the Black Lives Matter movement, and other issues of justice for which she’s been working her whole life.
“I’m looking forward to being part of these kinds of engagements with other students. I’m well-rooted in this work, but to see this being offered to young people at such pivotal points in their lives is heartening,” she said. “I’m profoundly excited to be in a place where I can witness young people engaging in this way. Working for good – that’s where we have to put our hope.”
Story courtesy of UNC.edu.
A trip across the street nearly three years ago altered the life of Carolina student Luis Sanchez in ways he could have never imagined.
“When I was a sophomore in high school, I was crossing a road one day after a work event, and I got hit by a car,” Sanchez said. “I went to the hospital. At first, everything seemed OK. They told me I was lucky to be alive.”
But then Sanchez, who grew up in Raleigh, endured a series of setbacks. Between the torn meniscus and infections, Sanchez underwent three surgeries and wasn’t able to regain his full ability to walk for nearly a year.
As he gained his strength, though, he also developed a clear vision of what he wanted to study at Carolina and pursue as a career: biomedical engineering.
My life experience really pointed me in the direction of how I should use my creativity.
“The accident is really what put biomedical engineering on the radar for me,” Sanchez said. “Learning about what they do in the day-to-day and learning about how those devices can really help people definitely sparked my interest in it.”
Story courtesy of UNC.edu.