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University Scholars Program
Designed to stimulate an interdisciplinary, inter-generational community of scholars, the University Scholars Program was created in 1998 by the Office of the Vice-Provost of Interdisciplinary Studies with a gift from Duke University Trustee Emerita Melinda French Gates.
The University Scholars Program (USP) welcomed its first matriculating class in 1999. This innovative program was the first of its kind in the United States and around the world, bringing together undergraduates, graduate students, and students from Duke’s professional schools.
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Spotlight on Anna Ortwein
Anna Ortwein is a Political Science and Economics major. Anna is especially drawn to work on women's involvement in politics. She saw how strongly research can guide political decision-making and how politics is grounded in evidence rather than assumptions. Anna is building her research skills as a Research Assistant with Professor Carnes, working on deliberative democracy which she hopes to later apply as a politician or diplomat. Looking ahead, she plans to pursue a master’s or Ph.D. and, ultimately, run again for the European or German Parliament. She will travel to South Africa with the Laidlaw Scholars Program in the Summer of 2026 to research the South African President’s Unemployment Initiative.
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Dr. Katya Wesolowski, University Scholars Faculty Director
Dr. Wesolowski is a Lecturing Fellow in the Department of Cultural Anthropology. As an anthropologist and dancer, she is interested in the possibilities that embodied practices open up for empathetic ways of being together, constructing and transmitting knowledge, and creating alternative futures. Her current project is an interdisciplinary and mixed-method exploration of social and stage dance in the Angolan diaspora. Dr. Wesolowski's courses often blend seminar and studio to create an experiential and dialogic learning environment that blurs the boundary between theory and praxis and emphasizes collective over individual knowledge acquisition and achievement.