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Local angles: Boca Raton, Fla., Union, N.J.

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Fisher’s outstanding college career leads to Luce Scholarship in Asia

Carl Erik Fisher of Union, N.J., a senior graduating with distinction Sunday (May 18) from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has won one of 15 Luce Scholarships awarded nationwide among 110 candidates.

The Henry Luce Foundation provides for a year's internship in Asia and aims to acquaint future American leaders who have no prior experience of Asia with the continent and their Asian counterparts. Winners are chosen for highest academic achievement and outstanding leadership ability.

The award’s value varies with each winner’s assignment and location. Fisher, the son of Martin A. Fisher of Boca Raton, Fla., and Elaine Fisher of Union, N.J., will conduct medical neuroscience research at Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea.

He hopes to use the Luce to see how Eastern medical centers operate. His life goals are to become a neuroscientist -- conducting research, teaching university students and treating patients -- and to sing opera in his spare time.

The Luce Scholarship helps round out an exceptional year for Carolina in the realm of distinguished scholarships. So far for 2002-2003, 11 UNC students have won the following scholarships: one Rhodes, one Harry S. Truman, one Luce, one Winston Churchill, one Morris K. Udall, two Jack Kent Cooke Foundation Graduate Scholarships, one Leonard Rieser Fellowship and three Barry M. Goldwater Scholarships.

"We had an outstanding group of applicants this year," said Dr. Robert Greenberg, director of the UNC Office of Distinguished Scholarships. "They worked extremely hard and are truly deserving of these honors."

Carolina ranks second behind Harvard University in numbers of Luce Scholars. Fisher is UNC’s 3rd winner since the program began in 1974. Last year’s UNC winner was Kelley Vance of Newland

"As a former Luce Scholar myself, I can attest to the incredible experience the scholarship provides," said Raymond B. Farrow III, development director for international studies and chair of the UNC nominating committee for the Luce. "A year in Asia will change your life. It changed mine."

Fisher also recently won one of UNC’s prestigious Chancellor’s Awards for outstanding leadership and academic work by undergraduates. The honor, the Edward McGowan Hedgpeth Award, recognizes the undergraduate member of Alpha Epsilon Delta judged most outstanding in service to the campus and community through the society. This year Fisher was president of the society, a national pre-medical honor group.

A biology and music major with a 3.7 grade-point average, Fisher won a National Science Foundation Fellowship to Boston University the summer after his freshman year at UNC. There he studied environmental factors associated with developmental disorders.

In his essay for the Luce, Fisher recalled an evening during his sophomore year in which he finished singing in Handel’s three-hour opera "Serse," then rushed to UNC Hospitals to shadow an academic physician who was attending in the emergency room that night.

"I often see that medicine is as much an art as singing is a science," he wrote. At UNC, he has been musical director of the male a cappella group the Clef Hangers, with which he toured England and Scotland last spring. Two summers ago, Fisher won a scholarship to the annual Berkshire Choral festival in Massachusetts.

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Photo url: http://www.unc.edu/news/pics/students/fisher_carl.jpg

Contacts: Dr. Robert Greenberg, 919-843-7764 or 919-962-7550, Greenberg@unc.edu
Raymond B. Farrow III, 919-962-6865, raymond_farrow@unc.edu

For more information, visit: http://www.hluce.org/3scholfm.html
News Services contact: L.J. Toler, 962-8589, laura_toler@unc.edu