2025 DukeEngage Spring Convocation/Send-Off

Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology; Faculty Director of DukeEngage

Dr. Folch earned her Ph.D. from the City University of New York in 2012 and arrived at Duke in 2015 after a stint at Wheaton College. She has a secondary appointment as associate professor of environmental sciences and policy in the Nicholas School of the Environment and has codirected the Amazon Lab and the Global Brazil Lab at the Franklin Humanities Institute.

Lecturer in the Sanford School of Public Policy; Distinguished Faculty Fellow in the Kenan Institute for Ethics

Eric Mlyn was the founding Executive Director of DukeEngage and Assistant vice Provost for Civic Engagement. Before that he was the founding director of the Robertson Scholars Program and served on the Political Science Faculty of UNC-Chapel Hill. He leads a project at Kenan on Democracy and Higher Education, looking at current threats to academic freedom, university governance and related issues. His intellectual interests focus on the role of higher education in fostering democracy and working with undergraduates to foster political and civic engagement. He holds a BA in Political Science from Tufts University and PHD in Political Science from the University of Minnesota. During the fall of 2019 he was a visiting scholar at the Tisch College for Civic Life at Tufts.

Sayuri is a junior from Princeton, NJ majoring in Biology with a minor in Psychology. At Duke she conducts research in a Regenerative Medicine lab and enjoys running, crosswords, and spending time outdoors. In Duke Engage Bangalore she lived at an Ashram (school) and taught Science and Math, set up community medical clinics, ate lots of idli-dosa (highly recommended!) and played plenty of cricket and soccer.

Angela Chen (she/her) is an undergraduate sophomore from Hong Kong studying Public Policy and Psychology. Over the summer, at the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation through DukeEngage, she investigated AI use in election information dissemination for minority language voters in the US. At Duke, Angela is continuing her research through Bass Connections and is an inaugural Laidlaw Scholar for research and leadership through Sanford’s Hart Leadership Program.

Aarav is a sophomore at Duke University, majoring in Public Policy with minors in History and Neuroscience. Originally from Tampa, FL, he enjoys spending time outdoors with his dog and watching college basketball. At Duke, Aarav is involved in Duke Mock Trial, Duke Student Government, and the Duke University Union. In DukeEngage in Boston, MA, Aarav worked with a social capital organization.

Aarav Dagar, DukeEngage Boston 2024

Caroline Hancock, DukeEngage Brazil (Foz) 2023

Dominique Barrett, DukeEngage Boston 2023

Isha Omer, DukeEngage Durham 2024

Nina Castro Alves, DukeEngage Marine Lab 2024

Phoebe Trask, DukeEngage Togo 2024

Sayuri Bhatia, DukeEngage India (Bangalore) 2024

Shanell St. Brice, DukeEngage Kenya (WISER) 2023