Bond, Morse, Terry win 2003 Sullivan Awards

Photo by Andrew Shurtleff

Michelle Morse (left) and Andrew Bond are the student recipients of the Sullivan Award, given for excellence of character and service to others.

By Charlotte Crystal

Mentoring is the theme that runs through the lives of this year’s three Algernon Sydney Sullivan Award winners: fourth-year students Michelle Morse and Andrew Bond, and Sylvia Terry, associate dean of U.Va.’s Office of African-American Affairs. They will be honored at Valediction Exercises on May 17.

An Echols and Holland scholar, Morse, 21, came to U.Va. from Philadelphia. A French major, she completed the requirements for medical school while making the dean’s list every semester. She was recently inducted into the Raven Society and Omicron Delta Kappa Honor Society.

She has taken advantage of internship and externship opportunities in medicine, including a research project funded by the National Institutes of Health at the Duke University Medical Center, and in Nice, France, studying French and completing an internship in pediatric surgery.

Sylvia Terry

Morse also has been active in the Office of African-American Affairs’ Peer Advisor Program, chairing the program’s pre-med committee for two years, and spearheading an academic initiative, “Raising the Bar,” to help boost students’ academic performance.

Morse starts medical school at the University of Pennsylvania in August and plans to practice pediatric medicine.

For the past three years, Bond, 22, of Stafford, has served on the residence life staff of the Office of the Dean of Students, which fosters students’ physical, academic, social and emotional growth.

As a second-year student, he was a resident assistant in Tuttle House. As a third-year, he was senior resident in Emmet House. And this year, he is co-chairman of the resident staff of 230 and works with an area coordinator to supervise 10 senior residents. More than just keeping first-year students out of trouble, Bond shows a “genuine love for people and will stop at nothing to help those dear to him,” said an alumnus in his nominating letter. “He is a person of high integrity, leadership and service … and his leadership has inspired others.”

Next fall, Bond, whose parents are teachers, will begin a two-year stint with Teach for America in an inner-city elementary school in Philadelphia.

Terry, whose parents were also teachers, earned a bachelor’s degree, with honors, from Virginia State College (now Virginia State University) and a master’s degree in English from U.Va. After teaching secondary school for eight years, Terry joined the University faculty in 1980 and in 1987 became U.Va.’s first director of minority student recruitment. She became associate dean of African-American Affairs about a decade ago.

“Sylvia Terry has been in every endeavor a pioneer, a builder and a contributor to the lives of the young people who have always been her first concern,” said President John T. Casteen III.

Terry’s gifts and hard work have greatly benefited U.Va., especially with regard to the recruitment and retention of minority students, said M. Rick Turner, dean of the Office of African-American Affairs.

In particular, the OAAA’s Peer Advisor program has gained national prominence under her leadership. Run by Terry since 1989, the program has strengthened U.Va.’s ability to recruit, retain and graduate black students, Turner said.

The Algernon Sydney Sullivan Awards go to one faculty member and two fourth-year students — one male, one female — to recognize excellence of character and service to humanity.