Lucy Vazquez Morrow

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“A formative experience that contributed to my academic and professional interests was living in Indian monasteries as a child. I played with street children, whose world view was very different. I learned to adapt quickly and to communicate without language. These experiences taught me what it was like to be a minority and ‘Other’ and how essential language and ethnicity is to identity.”

  • Program: 2009 Graduate Scholarship Recipient
  • Hometown: Chicago, Illinois

Biography

PROFILE: Lucy Vazquez Morrow graduated from middle school and began her college career at age 14. Not yet 19, she’s currently a graduate student in Wales at Cardiff University where she is enrolled in an M.A./Ph.D. program in sociolinguistics. A hardworking and dedicated student, Lucy has a fervent interest in studying the world’s many diverse cultures. Her early childhood, living with her mother in various Indian monasteries, led Lucy to believethat a better understanding of the relationship between minority identities, immigration, and language can be an important tool in managing a “positive tension” between ethnic identity and global cooperation.   She has a love of languages and taught herself basic French, Italian, and Russian, studied intermediate Irish-Gaelic and Anglo-Saxon, and minored in German at Roanoke College. In addition, she’s interested in Asian-Indian culture and her senior honors project examined the stereotypes that recent Asian Indian immigrants to the US have about Americans. One of her advisors at Roanoke ranked Lucy in the top 1% of all students he ever taught. In describing her life so far, Lucy called it “a dance on a double-edged sword, where experiences co-mingle both the good and the bad. From this emerged my talents and my purpose in life-to bridge the East and West, Outsiders and Insiders.”

INSPIRATION:  “My mother has devoted herself to work with disenfranchised and impoverished minority youth. Her work has inspired me to find a career that will allow me to help address issues such as poverty, and specifically the conflict that extreme poverty causes among ethnic minorities.”

ASPIRATION: Lucy has already served internships with various government agencies and may want to return to government, or work with an independent think tank. 

MAKING A DIFFERENCE:   Volunteerism is important to Lucy. She worked on a congressional campaign in the fall of 2008 and has also pitched in at The Nature Conservancy and Depaul Family Services in Roanoke.  

ACCOLADES: Lucy graduated magna cum laude from Roanoke, was a Phi Beta Kappa early inductee and a Reserve Marshall Scholar.

INTERESTING FACT: Lucy is working for a black belt in Shotokan Karate and Issw Ryu Karate and has a purple belt (intermediate level) in Shito Ryu Karate.

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