UNC Pair Earn Mitchell Scholarships

Posted on Nov. 24, 2014

Aleksander “Sasha” Seymore, a senior, and Thomas Golden ’11 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 for the award, which provides tuition, accommodations, a living-expenses stipend and an international travel stipend for one year. It 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.

“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,” said Chancellor Carol L. Folt. “They already have given so much to our community, and I can’t wait to see what they do next.”

Seymore, from New Bern, plans to graduate with a double major in economics and global studies and a minor in business administration in May. He is president of the class of 2015 and is the head of all student trip leaders for Kenan-Flagler Business School’s global immersions. He has earned the Turner Young Scholarship and the Dixon Scholarship, was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa as a junior and is a member of Honors Carolina. He gave up offers to play collegiate soccer to instead receive the Morehead-Cain Scholarship.

Golden, from Bradley Beach, N.J., graduated as a Morehead-Cain Scholar with a major in English and minors in chemistry and Spanish and is in medical school at Rutgers University. He had an early desire to become a physician for the disenfranchised and spent a summer in South America researching health care 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 volunteered at a community health center in the Mississippi Delta. He served as the student coordinator for the Health Literacy Initiative for Students Teaching Older Spanish Speakers and 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 health care 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 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.

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