News Release

Local angle: Cincinnati
Note: For a photo of Sekar, see end of story.

UNC’s Sekar wins second Udall Scholarship

CHAPEL HILL – For the second year in a row, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill student Nitin Sekar has received a Morris K. Udall Undergraduate Scholarship, one of the nation’s top merit awards.

The Morris K. Udall Scholarship and Excellence in National Environmental Policy Foundation in Tucson, Ariz., chose 80 scholars this year from among 434 candidates nominated by 221 colleges and universities nationwide. Scholars are chosen for commitment to careers in the environment or, for American Indian and Alaskan native applicants, commitment to careers in health care or tribal public policy. Scholars also must demonstrate leadership potential and academic achievement.

The award will cover tuition, books, room and board up to $5,000 for Sekar’s senior year. The son of M. Chandra and Padmini Sekar of Cincinnati, he graduated from Sycamore High School in Cincinnati in 2004.

Sekar, a biology and environmental science major, quotes the late Indian Prime Minister Indira Ghandi when he says, “Poverty is the worst polluter.” He hopes to become a scientist who works to protect the environment while also helping the poor.

“I will be particularly interested in helping create policy that helps the poor of the world improve their situations without destroying the flagship species and overall biodiversity our society values,” Sekar said. “Protecting the environment in the long run goes hand in hand with saving those suffering from the inequities of society. Throughout my career, I hope to participate in forming both local policy in impoverished, biodiverse areas and in forming international policy.”

He believes he could best achieve this goal as a university professor, a position in which he could conduct research as well as teach students about the ties between ecology and environmental science on the one hand and society’s needs and values on the other.

After graduating from Carolina next year, Sekar intends to pursue a doctoral degree related to animal ecology and conservation and a master’s degree in public administration with a focus on environmental science and policy. Then he would like to work with environmentally conscious organizations and businesses to broaden his non-academic perspective before seeking to join a university faculty.

“Nitin’s academic credentials are impeccable, and he has a very high level of involvement in student groups,” said Michael Lambert, Ph.D., a UNC associate professor and chair of the faculty committee that nominates students for the scholarship. “The Udall foundation is looking for people who are leaders.”

Sekar’s award brings the number of Udall Scholarships awarded to Carolina students to 11 since the awards began in 1996. Carolina was the only school in the state with a Udall Scholarship winner this year. Two North Carolinians who attend universities outside the state were among the recipients.

Congress authorized in 1992 to honor the late congressman from Arizona. A trust fund in the U.S. Treasury and private contributions support the foundation. Udall, who served in the House of Representatives from 1961-1991, advocated environmental conservation and championed the rights of American Indians and Alaska natives.

At Carolina, Sekar has worked with environmental groups and the Campus Y, a student service organization. In his sophomore year, he helped initiate UNC participation in the Millennium Villages Project led by Jeffrey Sachs of the Earth Institute. The project aims to show that any African community can lift itself out of poverty in an environmentally sustainable way in five years with $1.5 million from an outside sponsor. Sekar and others determined to raise that sum and have Carolina partner with a village.

Gradually they won over more than 60 student groups, faculty, private donors and students from Duke University in Durham and Bennett College in Greensboro, who formally joined the effort. To date, they’ve raised about $1 million in matching grants and donations, Sekar said.  

“This is a remarkable effort that leaves a lot of people at the university pretty amazed,” Lambert said. “It’s the first student-led effort in the project.”

Sekar’s merit awards from UNC have included a Chancellor’s Carolina Scholarship and a summer fellowship with which he studied ecology in Siberia in 2005. Last summer, he participated in one study of baboons and another about elephants, both in South Africa.

Working alone, he followed 115 wild baboons in the Constantiaberg Mountains, collecting data on their behavior, including foraging. The data helped a University of Cape Town zoologist predict how the baboons would be affected if a local government carried out plans to replace exotic pine and eucalyptus trees with native shrubs.

“The study found evidence supporting the hypothesis that sudden, careless removal of the trees could result in more human-baboon encounters and thus violence against baboons, which the government seeks to avoid,” Sekar said.

Working and living in South Africa’s Kruger National Park for more than three months, he studied insects, reptiles, birds, vegetation, rodents and more. “I experienced the awe for nature that one can only feel when one is on foot and sees a herd of bathing elephants, follows a family of giraffes or hears a roaring lion …,” he said. “Biodiversity offers many relatively tangible benefits to society as a source of useful chemicals and medicines and of ecological stability, but I believe, more strongly now than ever, that such diversity inspires everything from the individual psyche to a society’s culture. I am thus reassured that a life of working to understand and conserve biodiversity will be a life well spent.”

Morris K. Udall Foundation Web site: www.udall.gov

Photo URL: http://www.unc.edu/news/pics/students/sekar_nitin_4_07.jpg

Note: Sekar can be reached at (513) 258-8033 and sekar@email.unc.edu
For the news release about Sekar’s 2006 Udall, visit http://www.unc.edu/news/archives/apr06/udall042006.htm
Udall selection committee contact: Dr. Michael Lambert, (919) 962-3536, mlambert@unc.edu
News Services contact: L.J. Toler, (919) 962-8589