Master's Student Receives Schweitzer FellowshipKathy Colville, a first year MSW student, has been named a North Carolina Schweitzer Fellow for the 2004-2005 academic year. Colville's service project for the fellowship addresses the issue of domestic violence in Alamance County, N.C., where the sheriff handles 150 known cases of domestic violence each month. The Albert Schweitzer Fellowship awards graduate students all over the U.S. who are dedicated to meeting the health needs of underserved communities in their area. The program involves a service project as well as organizing a health symposium, and each fellow receives a $2,000 stipend. "I am excited because this is going to be such a new experience for me, and I am relieved because I had already developed relationships with all these people who wanted my project to happen, and I didn't want all of that to end," said Colville. Colville first started investigating her project when she read about the unusually high number of domestic violence deaths in Alamance County in The Mebane Enterprise. She then went to the Alamance County Sheriff to work on creating a program to increase awareness through the use of natural community networks, such as churches and schools. Colville said the sheriff's office is eager to begin domestic violence prevention, and she plans to aid in the process of integrating social workers into police work in order to create a more holistic approach to dealing with domestic violence. |
