Dobyns

Dean

Christopher (Kit) Dobyns '13, an Africana studies major in the College of Arts and Sciences, has received a 2012 Morris K. Udall Scholarship. Carly Dean '13, B.Arch. '14, earned an honorable mention.

The scholarship provides $5,000 toward tuition for undergraduates intending to pursue careers related to the environment, and to Native American and Alaskan native undergraduates pursuing careers in health care or tribal public policy. This year, 80 students from 70 colleges and universities were named Udall scholars on the basis of their leadership, service, academic achievement and commitment.

Dobyns minors in inequality studies and in law and society, and is a Meinig Family National Scholar and a Public Service Center scholar. He will serve this summer as a youth delegate to the Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development.

In 2011, Dobyns received Cornell's Freeman Fellowship to fund a summer internship related to peace studies and conflict resolution, and worked with the QuadPara Association of South Africa, which advocates for individuals with disabilities. He also received the Hatfield Award for ethics in business, sponsored by Cornell's Program on Ethics and Public Life, for his research on economic development in Cambodia.

He served as executive director of the Social Business Consulting Group, a student-run nonprofit providing consulting services to social ventures such as clean water initiatives and indigenous artisan cooperative, and has worked in various capacities abroad -- including with a microfinance institution in Nairobi; an anti-poverty organization in Cameroon; as an English teacher in Rwanda; and on a poultry farm in Tanzania. He also is a volunteer firefighter with the Cayuga Heights Fire Department.

Dean, a third-year architecture student in the College of Architecture, Art and Planning, is a Hunter R. Rawlings III Presidential Research Scholar working under city and regional planning professor Jeffrey Chusid on a three-year study of the Cornell campus's effects on its surroundings.

She is a student editor of The Cornell Journal of Architecture and a member of Schoolhouse South Africa, a student-led project of Cornell University Sustainable Design that designed and constructed a preschool in Gauteng, South Africa. Dean also worked with the student organization DEED (Design, Engineering, Education and Development) on "Re-Ithaca," a design project to develop ecologically, socially and economically sound solutions for the city of Ithaca. Dean is a teaching assistant in the Rand Hall Digital Fabrication Lab and a student manager at the Carol Tatkon Center.

Since 1998, 32 Cornell students have won Udall scholarships, which are sponsored by the Morris K. and Stewart L. Udall Foundation. The independent federal agency was established by Congress in 1992 to honor Arizona Congressman Morris K. Udall and amended in 2009 to honor his brother Stewart L. Udall, secretary of the interior during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations.

Students interested in applying for prestigious fellowships can contact Beth Fiori, Cornell Career Services fellowships coordinator, at btf1@cornell.edu, or visit http://www.career.cornell.edu/fellowships/default.html.