News Release

Local angles: Chapel Hill, Durham, Raleigh

By DAMIEN JACKSON
Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture and History

CHAPEL HILL — Mejs Hasan and Amy Oraefo, rising juniors at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, have received Undergraduate International Studies Fellowships to study abroad this fall.

The annual fellowship program, administered by UNC’s Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture and History, gives students from underrepresented groups up to $2,500 each to pursue academic research or study abroad.

The center also presented the 2005 Harvey E. Beech Award to senior Maurice Hines, a communication studies major from Durham. The $1,000 prize from the UNC Office of Minority Affairs will allow Hines to travel to Morocco to study Arabic and Moroccan culture.

Hasan, an economics major from Chapel Hill, will travel to the University of Stockholm in Sweden to research the Arabic language.

Oraefo, a communication studies and cultural studies double major from Raleigh, will use her fellowship to research religious systems in western Africa.

"We’ve given awards to six students over the past two years," said Dr. Joseph Jordan, Stone Center director. "These fellowships are a way of supporting the university’s intentions of opening the international experience to all students."

Established in 2004, the fellowships are funded through the generous gift of an anonymous alumnus who maintains an abiding interest in the Stone Center. Applicants are evaluated on their academic records, extracurricular engagements, financial need and the objectives of their intended study abroad. Upon their return, fellows must publicly share their research in a forum arranged by the Stone Center.

The Beech Award, which benefits students and student projects, is named in recognition of one of the first black students to graduate from Carolina – with J. Kenneth Lee, from the UNC School of Law in June 1952.

- 30 -

Stone Center contact: Damien Jackson, (919) 962-9001, dtjack@email.unc.edu

News Services contact: L.J. Toler, (919) 962-8589