Four doctoral and professional students were selected as this year’s Young Trustee finalists.
Young Trustees are current students or students who graduated in spring or summer 2022 selected to serve on the Board of Trustees for two or three years. The position was created to include “individuals closer to the experience of today’s Duke,” who can “think broadly” about the University. There were 32 total graduate and professional applicants this year, according to Margaret Epps, secretary to the Board of Trustees and chief of staff to the Duke president.
Joshua Crittenden, a fifth-year doctoral candidate in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, Nicole De Brigard, a third-year juris doctor candidate at the Law School, Eric Juarez, Graduate School ‘22, and Warren Lattimore, a second-year Th.D. candidate at the Divinity School, were selected as this year’s finalists.
The Graduate/Professional Young Trustee finalists meeting, open to all graduate and professional students, will be held on Mar. 22 from 6 to 7:30 p.m. in the Holsti-Anderson Family Assembly Room in Rubenstein Library.
Crittenden is an Alfred P. Sloan Scholar and Association GEM Fellow who has served on several programs to “benefit both the university and the local community.” He serves as the president of the Duke Black Graduate and Professional Student Association, an advisory member of the President’s Council on Black Affairs and an executive member of the National Society of Black Engineers.
Crittenden, who is from Windsor, Conn., is also a leader within the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity and a parishioner of Mount Zion Baptist Church-Greensboro. He graduated from the University of Connecticut in 2018.
De Brigard is a James E. Padilla Scholar and the vice president of the Latin American Law Students Association. She also serves as the graduate student representative for the Racial Equity Advisory Council and a member of the Dean’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee. De Brigard was a Young Trustee finalist in 2022.
Miami native De Brigard graduated from the University of Florida, majoring in political science and criminology. Beyond Duke, De Brigard has worked as an Honors Intern for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a criminal law intern for the U.S. Attorney's Office and a policy intern for the Future of Privacy Forum.
Juarez, a Consortium for Faculty Diversity Fellow and visiting lecturer in psychology and neuroscience at Mount Holyoke College, was awarded the Forever Duke Student Leadership Award and the Duke Cornerstone Award in 2022. While at Duke, he was a member of the Next Generation Living and Learning Experiences Task Force, the Graduate and Professional Education and Research Committee, the Strategic Education Sessions on the Duke Brand and the Future of Higher Education and Academic Medicine, as well as the Young Trustee Nominating Committee.
Juarez received his A.B. in psychology at Harvard and graduated from Duke with a Ph.D. in psychology and neuroscience in 2022.
Lattimore is a Kenan Institute “Race and the Professions” fellow. He has also served on Duke's Racial Equity Advisory Council. He is also a course director in Duke’s Occupational Therapy Doctorate program. In addition to being a Th.D. student at the Divinity School, Lattimore is pursuing an African & African American Studies certificate in the Graduate School.
A Chicago native, Lattimore received his B.A. in political science and government from the University of Chicago and his master of theology from the Xavier University of Louisiana. Outside of Duke, he has founded two nonprofit organizations.
Young Trustee selection process
The nominating committee for the Young Trustee is selected by the secretary to the Board of Trustees and chief of staff to the Duke president, currently Margaret Epps. This practice started in 2021.
In prior Young Trustee election cycles, the YTNC membership was chosen by the University secretary and the DSG president. Any undergraduate student other than the DSG president was able to apply to be on the YTNC.
Both the undergraduate and graduate/professional Young Trustee selection process underwent very similar revisions in 2021 in order to “increase awareness and understanding of the Young Trustee position, enhance transparency to ensure fairness and inclusion, and align with best practices in board governance for private universities,” Epps told The Chronicle in 2021.
The Chronicle previously broke down these changes and the details of the new selection process.
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Audrey Wang is a Trinity senior and data editor of The Chronicle's 120th volume. She was previously editor-in-chief for Volume 119.