• Current Scholars
• Alumni
• Dream Big
• Scholar Travels
• Scholar Art & Music
• Scholar Stories
• The Scholar Experience

Sara E. Drum

Biography

Graduate Scholarship Biography (prepared July 2006): Sara Drum had a variety of jobs, the most unusual being the stage manager of a theater circus, before she found her purpose while traveling in Egypt. Volunteering at an organization providing free veterinary care, she often saw the vets treat humans as well as their animals because there were no other health care options. "After having witnessed first hand the consequences of the lack of basic health care, I decided to dedicate my life to providing health related services to improve the lives of others."

Sara worked 40 hours a week to finance both her pre-nursing education and a dog shelter she founded. In 2003, she received a Jack Kent Cooke Undergraduate Transfer Scholarship to study nursing at Emory. "The scholarship gave me the financial freedom to remain actively engaged in my community, which became an integral part of my continued personal and professional growth," she says. Sara volunteers for several international relief organizations and is a volunteer member of a medical team in rural Haiti.

Long-term, Sara wants to work in a developing country such as Haiti, creating health care systems where basic care is lacking or nonexistent. "My experiences in Haiti have shown me that the periodic delivery of supplies and medical help is only a temporary fix. Permanent solutions need to be in place where care and education are consistent."

Undergraduate Scholarship Biography (prepared May 2003): When Sara traveled overseas, she saw desperation in places without basic hygiene or health services, and deplorable conditions for the disabled and mentally ill. "After witnessing first-hand the lack . . . of the most basic of health care, I have decided to dedicate my life to providing health-related services," Sara says.

"A Dog's Dream," a rescue shelter Sara founded, exemplifies her "philosophy that anything can be accomplished through determination." Neighborhood gentrification led to many dogs being abandoned by people who could not take them to their new homes. At first, Sara took the dogs home, then she recruited neighbors as foster homes. Now the shelter is in a former warehouse, where the dogs are re-socialized, brought to health, and placed for adoption. Sara is also an on-call surgical assistant/rehab therapist for an animal clinic. When the vet travels, she is the caretaker and manager.

But Sara's career goal is to set up health care in impoverished parts of the world. Through Grady Hospital, Sara volunteers for SAFETY (Supporting African-American Families, Empowering Their Youth), a social/behavioral research group that supports victims of domestic violence by providing resources on shelters, parenting, mental health, substance abuse, and legal advocacy.

She's on the dean's list, is in the Honors Program Student Association, and was named Georgia Perimeter College's Outstanding Regents' Scholar. And she does all this while holding down a full-time job as a manager/server at a bistro.

Other Scholars Like Sara