How can students get the most out of their DukeEngage experience?
A key component of all DukeEngage programs, reflection helps students to derive meaning from their experiences. DukeEngage offers a reflection challenge each year, with submissions ranging from essays to oral stories and even poetry. Students share their reflections at the DukeEngage Fall Reunion, where these pictures were taken.
Here’s some of our top reflections from 2025, organized by winning category!
Best Overall
Deborah Lendore won “Best Overall” in the DukeEngage Reflection Challenge for her writing and poems about her experience working in the Refugee Rights Unit at the University of Cape Town.
“It was humbling to realize how small my impact could feel. But even then, I learned that care and commitment still mattered.”
–Deborah Lendore
Culture and Humilty
Tashiel Reid won the “Culture and Humility” category for her dynamic spoken-word poem “Thirty More Years” that confronts health inequities in Chicago and the importance of access to the arts.
“So my hope is: we embrace art in these communities,
Heal their traumas internally.
Because the arts really should be for everybody.”–Tashiel Reid
Courage and Adaptability
Sienna Giuseppi won the “Courage and Adaptability” category for her fast-paced “Ignite Talk”-style presentation about building a bridge in DukeEngage Eswatini.
“The songs sung during work reminded us: this bridge was not charity. It was partnership, gratitude flowing both ways.”
–Sienna Giuseppi
Gratitude
Maddie Morrison won the “Gratitude” category for her deeply personal reflection on how she reframed her father’s health crisis through the lens of community engagement.
“Community engagement has the power to save lives…in critical moments, best demonstrated by the heroes who saved my father.”
— Maddie Morrison
Hope, Vision, and Purpose
Leo Goldberg won the “Hope, Vision, and Purpose” category for his reflection on protests and patriotism during his time in DukeEngage D.C.
“While it is meaningful and important to protest alongside those who agree with you…it is arguably more important to express your dissent…”
–Leo Goldberg