Alumni Board Scholar Profile: Q&A with 2015 Scholar Morgan Carter

Boettcher Scholar Year: 2015
Hometown: Parker
University: University of Denver, double majors in International Studies and Media, minors in Leadership Studies and Spanish

What are you currently interested in pursuing after graduating?

I am hoping to go to law school in the future and would love to do international human rights. I am planning to take a couple gap years in between graduation and starting law school to work beforehand. I am looking at jobs on the east coast and specifically in the Washington, D.C. area.

Tell us about what activities, groups, and/or organizations you have joined in college and why you joined them.

I have been most involved in the University of Denver Programming Board (DUPB), the Pioneer Leadership Program (PLP) and the DU Club Rowing team. Each of these organizations has offered me a unique opportunity to become involved in community-building projects and activities that have helped to strengthen me and have given me the ability to give back in each group. In addition, I initially joined rowing to try something new and completely different from what I had done before. It was a new adventure that I came to deeply love!

Tell us about an important mentor you have had.

One of the most important mentors who I have had is my career counselor at DU, Mary Michael Hawkins. I started going into her office in the beginning of my freshman year, with the plan to get an internship after my freshman year and to have someone to help me and mentor me as I pursued my goals. What started out as just occasional appointments turned into deep and enlightening weekly conversations that we still have even now. Meeting with Mary Michael was one of the greatest decisions I could have made. Mary Michael has helped me to narrow down my goals, better determine the kind of person I am, and has helped me hone in on my talents while improving in areas where I struggle. She is kind-hearted, attentive, and a genuinely wonderful person who I am blessed to have gotten to know over the past four years, and someone whom I hope to continue knowing for many years to come.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?

The best advice I have ever received is to be able to say “no.” There have been countless times in my past where I have added more and more things to my plate, convincing myself that I could manage and could juggle it all. Most of the time, I was able to make it work, but it would leave me feeling drained and exhausted. In the past couple years, I started looking at reorganizing and prioritizing my time. I give my all into a few things, rather than little bits into countless activities. I am able to give more fully, and my involvement actually gives me energy, instead of taking it away.

If you could have dinner with one person or a few people from history, who would you choose and why?

I would choose to have dinner with Wilma Rudolph. When I was in fourth grade, I did a character presentation where I had to do research on a historical figure and dress up as them, and she was the woman I chose to present. In the 1960s she was the first woman to win three gold medals and was the fastest woman in the world, even after struggling with polio and needing a leg brace for much of her youth. She made strides for black women and was regarded as a civil rights pioneer. As a fourth grader, I found her story inspiring and I still carry it with me years later. She has been a hero of mine since that time and I would love to learn about determination from a woman who embodied it so strongly.