Sasha Seymore, a UNC-Chapel Hill senior, and Thomas Golden, a 2011 graduate from UNC-Chapel Hill, have been named recipients of the George J. Mitchell Scholarship, which supports graduate studies in Ireland and Northern Ireland.
Seymore and Golden were two of 12 Americans selected Nov. 22 for the award, which provides tuition, accommodations, a living expenses stipend and an international travel stipend for one year. This is the first time Carolina has had two Mitchell recipients in the same year, and brings the cumulative total of UNC recipients to five since the first class of Mitchell Scholars in 2001.
“Receiving the Mitchell Scholarship is a well-deserved honor for these two outstanding students who are both working to make our world a better place,’’ said UNC-Chapel Hill Chancellor Carol L. Folt. “Sasha’s vision for athletics to serve as common grounds to bring about peace and Thomas’ desire to improve healthcare delivery for underserved populations illustrate the best of student scholarship and service. They already have given so much to our community, and I can’t wait to see what they do next.”
Seymore, 22, is the son of Noah McKimmey Seymore III, and is from New Bern, N.C. He is a 2011 graduate of New Bern High School and plans to graduate with a double-major in economics and global studies in the College of Arts and Sciences and a minor in business administration this May.
At UNC-Chapel Hill, Seymore serves as the class president for the UNC Class of 2015 and is the head of all student trip leaders for Kenan-Flagler Business School’s global immersions.
Seymore earned the Turner Young Scholarship and the Dixon Scholarship while at UNC-Chapel Hill. He was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa as a junior and is a member of Honors Carolina.
Seymore is a gifted athlete who gave up offers to play collegiate soccer to instead receive the Morehead-Cain Scholarship, a full, four-year scholarship to UNC that also funds four summer enrichment experiences and additional educational opportunities. He made the junior varsity basketball team at Carolina as a freshman and earned a walk-on spot for the varsity basketball team this fall. Seymore uses his passion for sports to promote public service in the world, a goal he will use his Mitchell Scholarship to study the possibilities of peace through sports at the University of Queens in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
“Sasha Seymore is a remarkable young man,’’ said Mary Floyd-Wilson, director of Carolina’s Office of Distinguished Scholarships. “He embodies the ideal qualities of a scholar-athlete. Not only is he passionately committed to furthering peace-building through sports, but he is also an inspirational leader who derives joy from the hard work he puts into athletics, academics, and volunteering. His uncanny ability to bring diverse people together will translate beautifully to his future work in conflict resolution.”
Golden, from Bradley Beach, N.J., graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill as a Morehead-Cain Scholar with a major in English and minors in Chemistry and Spanish in the College of Arts and Sciences, and is now in medical school at Rutgers University.
Golden had an early desire to become a physician for the disenfranchised and spent a summer in South America researching healthcare systems for the impoverished. He later conducted research in Nicaragua on the incidence of gastric cancer.
Before medical school, Golden worked as an emergency room technician in Mississippi, and he also volunteered at a community health center in the Mississippi Delta. He often helped marginalized citizens, and he served as the student coordinator for the Health Literacy Initiative for Students Teaching Older Spanish Speakers (LISTOS). He later organized health education workshops for Spanish-speaking children.
Golden plans to study Public Health at University College Cork in Ireland with the goal of improving healthcare delivery.
The nationwide competition attracted 270 applicants for 12 Mitchell Scholarships. Recipients are chosen on the basis of academic distinction, leadership and service and spend a year of post-graduate study at institutions of higher learning in Ireland and Northern Ireland.
The Mitchell Scholarship program is administered by the U.S.-Ireland Alliance, a nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C. It is also funded by corporate, government and private entities and by the participating Irish universities. The program honors former U.S. Senate Majority leader George Mitchell for his leadership in the Northern Ireland peace process.
